BY JOHN N. FRANK

Real estate professionals should be looking to technology to cut their operating costs in response to tough market conditions this year, said Brian Boero, a partner with 1000watt Consulting, who spoke Wednesday at Real Estate Connect, a conference sponsored by Inman News.

Boero ran through 50 tech tools that can help real estate pros lower their expenses while also making them more efficient and more responsive to customers.

Among his recommendations:

• Take all business processes online, using such free tools as Google Docs and Web sites that provide free conference calling service. This will cut software expenses.

• Distribute property listings as widely as possible. Use Web sites that will do such distribution with little or no charge.

• Use blogs to build your reputation.

• Use measurement tools to know how many people come to your Web site and/or blog and to see what items on a site get the most interest.

• Go paperless, using digital forms and online document storage so you can retrieve documents even when you’re not in your office.

Stay tuned to the blog for more news from this week's Inman Conference.