The 2009 survey of California home buyers and sellers from the California Association of Realtors is out and it has some interesting statistics about buyers and sellers patterns over the past several years. As of 2009 84% of home buyers identify themselves as internet buyers versus 28% in the year 2000. The reverse statistic shows that only 16% of home buyers find a home without going on line.

 

Internet buyers start looking at homes on the computer several weeks before they get in a car and driving around. Once Internet buyers start looking at homes the see an average of 13.6 homes before they purchase as opposed to the traditional buyer who looked at 25 homes before buying this year. From personal experience, internet buyers seem to know more about the neighborhoods they like and the prices in the neighborhoods from surfing the internet and looking at the local area.

 

It is interesting where buyers go to get their initial information, versus where they find their most useful information. Buyers say they looked at Google first 40% of the time, with Realtor.com coming in second with 28% of the buyers. The flip side of that is that 37% thought Realtor.com was the most useful site they visited followed by real estate brokerage web sites, individual agent’s sites and Zillow.

 

89% of buyers visited Realtor.com followed by 81% visiting company web sites and 66% looking at agent web sites. The rest of the list goes down from there! Individual home web sites were checked out by 12% of buyers, but they don’t show up on the list of useful sites. That adds fuel to the idea that individual home web sites are there to stroke the seller’s ego during the sales presentation and really don’t do much to sell the home!

 

There was a 10% jump from 2008 to 2009 in the number of agents who are using the internet to locate properties, look at the pictures, virtual tours and maps. 72% of buyers now use these functions. Some of the other activities such as finding a specific agent, firm or finding specific homes to see are down. These ties in with the numbers that show 89% of internet buyers and 98% of traditional buyers find the home they actually purchased from their agent.

 

A few years ago there were predictions that the internet would make real estate agents obsolete. With 90% of all buyers being made aware of the property they purchased because of an agent, it seems like we will be around for a few more years. The same goes for brick and mortar real estate offices. A lot of the new startups went out of business when the market took a downturn and their business model did not produce enough income to keep the doors open.

 

We will talk a little more about that next week when we look at the seller’s part of the survey.

 

If I can show you how to have an easier, smoother transaction, would you work with me?

 

Chris Morris

Broker Associate

Alain Pinel Realtors

408.357.8783 direct

Brokers License 00780130