Is 85% of consumers using the internet enough to change our ways? How about the graph to the left, which if the trend continues, will be OVER 90% in 2009?

Here's the statistic - "85% of the time the internet is used for home searches". This is one of many statistics that comes out every year. However, numbers are just numbers unless they're interpreted, so what does this mean?

Imagine 100 people are looking for a home. 85 of them would use the internet to find their new home. Curious how many people use Real Estate agents for home searches? 85. The same number of people that use the internet.

Here's another fun fact. If you added together the percentages of people who use home books or magazines, builders, television AND billboards, it's still less than the number of people who use the internet. In fact, it's 14% less. Interestingly, magnets, calendars, pens, and park benches aren't even tracked.

The bottomline, when it comes to finding a home, the internet is used as often as real estate agents. In fact, everyone I know that has ever bought a home found it online themselves, and than found an agent who could get it for them. What if you could do that for them? What if your website was what they found instead of the free MLSs out there? What if they found that home on your site? I wonder who they would ask for assistance?

What if there was a technology certification out there that could teach anyone how to create their own consumer facing, online presence? Look no farther, you've found it.