Internet Stats from the California Association of Realtors

If you’re still unconvinced that the internet can be a great lead generating marketing tool, here are some stats that demonstrate the growing popularity of the web. Of course, generating leads requires that your website be professional and up-to-date with new content added frequently!

So-called “Internet buyers,” who comprised only 28 percent of the market in 2000, accounted for 45 percent of the market last year and may now be in the majority, reports the California Association of Realtors in its 2003 “Internet Versus Traditional Buyers” report.

CAR’s study found that, once Internet home buyers find a real estate agent, they spend only about two weeks looking at seven homes before they find one to buy. Conventional buyers need to be driven around more than three times as long: 6.7 weeks looking at more than 15 homes, according to CAR.

Internet buyers shell out $100,000 more than those who are coy about the Net — a median $462,200, compared to $350,000. At the going 6 percent commission rate, that’s a $6,000 bonus for the agent.

The National Association of Realtors recently reported that for the first time more home buyers nationwide used the Internet instead of newspaper ads as a key information source. The research — which included only newspaper ads and not magazines, direct marketing advertisements and other print media — says 66 percent of buyers surveyed reported using the Internet, compared to 49 percent of buyers who say they used newspaper ads. In 1995 only 2 percent of home buyers browsed the Web for housing, NAR reports.

» Read article from San Jose Business Journal