Shopping over ‘landline’

NEWPORT BEACH — With its new interactive window display, Coldwell Banker hopes to turn Balboa Island into the beachfront that never sleeps.

The real estate office at 201 Marine Ave. recently became the first Coldwell location in the country to debut the Street Surfer program, which allows customers to look up information on listed properties through a television screen in the window.

Viewers can call a toll-free number on their cellphones to activate the screen, then use the buttons on their phones to select different properties, learn about prices and view photos.

Coldwell installed the Street Surfer technology as a pilot program last month and plans to expand it to locations across the country if business goes well.

“We’re testing this here because we have other retail locations where there’s sidewalk traffic,” said Steve Sutherlen, the branch manager for Coldwell Banker in Corona del Mar. “We have a dozen offices in Manhattan. This would be perfect for a place like Manhattan, where people walk around with their cellphones.”

The 40-inch flat-screen Samsung television displays listings and photos from Californiamoves.com, a website owned by Coldwell Banker.

The featured properties cover zip codes in Balboa, Corona del Mar, West Newport and other surrounding neighborhoods.

The most expensive property on the site is listed for $75 million; the cheapest condominiums, Sutherlen said, go for less than $1 million.

Customers can access the Street Surfer program 24 hours a day and leave voice messages overnight for Coldwell brokers.

“If somebody does it at 9 o’clock at night, we can come in at 8 o’clock in the morning and call them right back,” Sutherlen said.

Christopher Hopkins-Gillispie, Coldwell’s communications manager for Southern California, said it was too early to tell how much of an impact Street Surfer would have on business, but the early signs had been promising.

“We’ve been getting some leads, definitely,” he said.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.