Online Real Estate Technology

New research from the US today has revealed that Home buyers are twice as likely to use on line sources than print sources to find information about open houses they are interested in, this is according to research conducted by Harris Interactive.

The survey commissioned for Trulia.com found that 62% of US home buyers use or plan to use on line sites to find open houses, compared with 53% who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36% who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third (31%), who use/plan to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyer’s. 

The study also found that though many home buyers rely upon a range of different sources to gather information about open houses, 41% say online sources are their primary resource, while 14% cite print sources.

More than 9 in 10 home buyers in the US (91%) attended or plan to attend open houses during their home-purchase process.

“The real estate section of the weekend newspaper is no longer the go-to resource for open houses,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia. “Home buyers are increasingly going on line to not only search for the most up to date listings but also to obtain rich information about the neighborhood, schools, and local shops.”

Inkinen added that on line sites – such as Trulia – and related iPhone applications have experienced dramatic growth in recent years because they enable home buyers to search for open houses in neighborhoods that interest them, sign up for email alerts and learn more about the local areas in which they’re looking.

“We used to see home buyers walk into open houses with a newspaper in their hands,” said Aman Daro, VP of Integrated Marketing at McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco. “But now they walk in with print outs of their search on the web. What’s more, consumers are walking in very educated from their on line research – they know details about the property and the neighborhood, and are more highly engaged in the process than the casual lookers of years past.”

Here are the results of the survey as published by Harris:

On Line Vs Print

The slowing economy is having an impact on advertising revenues in all mediums, but the hardest hit appears to be newspaper classified advertising revenue. According to new figures released by the American Newspaper Association, newspaper advertising revenues fell to their lowest levels in 14 years.

Print advertising dollars fell by 17.7% to $34.740 billion and on line advertising fell by 1.8% to $3.166 billion in 2008.

It is not surprising then that 4 major US newspaper groups are in bankruptcy protection, the most notable is the Tribune Co, owners of papers in Chicago & Los Angeles. Seven newspapers have closed or are about to close and switch to an on line model to survive due to losses in advertising revenue.

Real Estate sections in the press have also been hit hard with newspapers advertising revenue from real estate falling 37% in 2008, car adds fell 29% and employment 42.5%. In total, real estate advertising and employment classified advertising has fallen more than 60% since 2006.

I’m sure these figures will give the Australian newspapers cause for concern.

At a time when some real estate offices and groups are cutting their advertising, and in particular their on line spend, Century 21 in the US have announced they are are committing more of their advertising dollar to the internet. In particular they plan to spend on display advertising, search engine marketing and enhanced listing partnerships with the leading real estate web portals. Century 21 will be decreasing their spend on main stream media namely TV.

This announcement comes hot on the heels of the news that Century 21 US was recently voted the most recognised real estate brand in the US. In 2008, the company reported that their leads from on line advertising increased by over 237% and their cost per lead decreased by 62%.

It really is good to see one of the major real estate groups in the US publicly endorse the strength of the net.

Now, if we could just get that confidence to flow through to Australian real estate groups and break some of their old media habits. 2009 might just be that year!

One of the vital ingredients of on line marketing is your web site which has to be attached to a domain name. This week I’ve been conducting on line marketing audits for agents in North Qld and one of the checks that I conduct is whether you own your domain name. Surprisingly I’ve found that in most cases the business owners don’t. Not owning your domain name is the same as not registering your business name, someone else can come in underneath you, register the domain name, effectively stopping you from ever using your own name for your web site domain, worse still, they can then try and sell it to you for exorbitant fees.

So get on to the domain registration sites today and buy, if they are available, your business name,your own name, and all the variations within your suburb or area of operation, and buy all of the domains, including the .com, .com.au, .net, .net.au and the .mobi versions.

Protect your self and your business.

If in doubt ask me via this blog and I’ll help you.

Here is the location for the first of the domain.com.au power breakfast’s that I will be hosting next week. The first will be at the Toowoomba Royal Showgrounds at Glenvale Road Toowoomba on Tuesday 21st Oct. The event will start at 7:00am, the event is almost booked out however, contact David Foki on 07 3031 6229 if you would like to attend. This will be followed on Wednesday 22nd October with the breakfast at the Maroochydore Surf Life Saving Club on the Sunshine Coast.

This is well worth you coming along and you’ll walk away with some great ideas on social networking, blogging and podcasting as tools to integrate into your on line strategy.

The breakfast events are nearly at capacity now but contact David Foki on 07 3031 6229 and sweet talk him and I’m sure he’ll make room for you.