Real Estate Blog

Yahoo! Inc., just released the results of a study they did on how the Internet influences home buyers and sellers and specifically how it influences consumers when it comes to selecting a real estate agent.

No great surprises in the results (which were tabulated from a survey of 500 participants)… Yahoo’s found that… Yes… the Internet plays a “pivotal role in the selection process and was central in helping consumers identify agents”.

The numbers are good brain fodder though.. here’s what Yahoo! found:

• Home buyers and sellers consider approximately two agents on average before making a final decision.
• The Internet impacts consumer trust. Forty percent of respondents credited a site in increasing their trust in the agent.
• 74 percent of people who accessed an agent Web site got there with the help of a search engine. [emphasis mine]
• The online research process is quick and intense: consumers spent an average of 12 hours online researching agents and 75 percent selected an agent within one week of starting their search.
• 45 percent of respondents used the Internet to learn about agents they didn’t know existed.
• 41 percent discovered special deals and promotions offered from an agent through the Internet.

Struck me that maintaining a blog might still be the best way for Realtors to deal with the discovery and introduction process.

But the biggest find reinforces what many of the online search sites are banking on (see Trulia Gets Beaucoup Bucks) - there is still a massive disconnect between Realtor’s advertising budgets and where consumers are looking for information. According to Yahoo! (bias noted) 77 percent of respondents searched the Internet for information during their research process compared to 34 percent for print.

And guess where Realtors are still spending the most of their money? A Borrell Associates report quoted by Yahoo says that newspapers continue to get biggest share of Realtor advertising dollars at 40 percent (though online is catching up - and now stands at 32 percent).

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Related Articles at Future of Real Estate Marketing:

• Stroking Your RSS Ego
• MyNewPlace promises to help you find an apartment
• Turnhere Takes a CAR Ride
• Jump into 3D with Agent Earth
• Internet Marketing for Real Estate Developers

Source:
More Proof You Need to be Marketing Online

Five things that caught my eye today:

• Google Local Business Center redesigns itself, making it even easier to update your company’s information into its small business database. Why is this important? Google supplements organic search results with entries from this database, often ahead of even the top ranked destinations (see Google Implements Local Search Results).

• Like Google Alerts “on Steroids”… Trackur.com was created by Marketing Pilgrim Andy Beal and helps you monitor your online identity (see Rise in Internet Use Reinforces the Need for a Cohesive Identity Strategy).

• Twist monitors trends in Twitter. Interesting tool that monitors and compares the volume of daily tweets contain search terms (see Do You Twitter?).

• BuddyPress is a new initiative to turn Wordpress MU into a social networking platform. Like Ning, this may make it even easier to build your own ‘niche’ social network (see Niche Networks and Marketing Real Estate).

• Top Non-ActiveRain Real Estate Blogs. Skewed of course by the data sources, but interesting nonetheless. Kudos to Jon for putting it together every month.

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Related Articles at Future of Real Estate Marketing:

• Trulia Hits the Streets
• Quick Hit: Trulia profile
• ShackPrices Makes For Fast Home Searching
• More on the Use of Video in Real Estate
• Leopard Quick Tip: Use Web Clips to Keep Track of your RSS Readers

Read the original:
Five Quick Hits to Keep You Going

By Michelle McClory



RSS content syndication is a relatively new member of the internet marketing family of campaign options.