Find your next home on YouTube.

That?s the latest promise of the phenomenally popular Internet video site and its brethren, where, in addition to viewing cultural treasures such as wedding bloopers and clips from The Simpsons, you can shop for real estate.

From slick cinematic productions touting waterfront castles to underlit homemade tours of modest condos, real-estate marketers are eyeing online video as the next way to capture that increasingly elusive creature, the home buyer.

"I was thinking about that somebody who?s just scrolling through (video sites) late at night and types in the words real estate and Chicago and says, ?Let?s see what pops up,? " said Dina Davis, a Coldwell Banker agent in Evanston, Ill., who made a video of a town-house listing and stuck it on YouTube.com.

After two months and a paltry 45 viewings, the town house is still available.

"I didn?t think we?d get tons of business from it," Davis said. "It?s another avenue, another option for marketing. I just hoped to pique someone?s interest."

Still, the experience at least has whet her appetite, and she is preparing another video tour, of an Evanston condo.

Once posted, it will find itself in increasingly crowded company. Analysts say the practice, though in its infancy, is beginning to boom and that new sites are vying to become "the YouTube of real estate."

Just how many real-estate videos are claiming a spot in cyberspace is hard to quantify because general-interest video meccas such as YouTube and Yahoo! don?t have a category for them. House-hunters must cull the videos from millions of other clips by typing in search terms.

That might be about to change.

"I think 2007 will be the year video breaks out," said Joel Burslem, marketing director for a Portland, Ore., brokerage and host of a popular blog, futureofrealestatemarketing.com.

Burslem cites the increasing accessibility of video technology just as the real-estate boom is beginning to fade and the industry is scratching for ways to attract attention.

At the same time, the major search engines ? including YouTube?s parent, Google ? are emerging as players in hosting real-estate listings and property-mapping tools. Designating a category for real-estate videos would be a natural complement, he said.

Burslem expects the video sites to create such "channels" dedicated to real-estate content, perhaps even by specific brokerages, through special marketing agreements.

"I don?t think it will be too long before you can upload a video to your listing on Google Base and have it searchable on Google Real Estate," Burslem said. "I don?t think that?s out of the realm of possibility at all."

YouTube spokesman Aaron Ferstman said he couldn?t comment on specific plans for either site, but he said online video exposure has an obvious appeal in real estate.

"When a (real-estate agent) puts it on YouTube, it?s being broadcast to the world," he said.

It?s not, however, being broadcast in a consistent form.

For the most part, the videos aren?t the familiar "virtual tours" ? the oncenovel, 360-degree room scans that have inhabited brokerage sites for a decade or so.

Many of the current videos are a few minutes of digital footage shot by a videographer ? or a real-estate agent or homeowner ? strolling room-toroom.

At one end of that scale are videos on a par with Davis?: a walk-through embellished with subtitles such as "Living Room" and the agent?s contact information. In Davis? town-house presentation, there?s no narration, just dubbed-in background music from a jazz ensemble.

Davis? production costs are the camera and several hours of her time, she said.

Others pull out all the stops.

Professional videographer Malachi Leopold found himself being hoisted by a hydraulic lift last year to capture the second-story view that a buyer of an oceanfront lot in Massachusetts would get after building on it.

Later, Leopold, who heads the Left Brain/Right Brain production company in Chicago, also shot footage of the countryside and streets of a nearby town to provide local flavor, he said.

After the video went up on several Web sites, it was spotted by someone in California who bought the property, Leopold said.

Leopold put more than two workdays into the project. He declined to specify his earnings but speculated that real-estate agents would expect to pay $1,000 to $3,500 for such efforts ? perhaps $5,000 or more, depending on the complexity, which would limit polished videos to high-end sites.