Realtor.com
According to the National Association of Realtors, 90% of today's home buyers use the internet for the home search process. That number has grown consistently over the last 10 years. Ten years ago, the Internet was just a small marketing niche in real estate, now it has become the primary marketing vehicle for real estate.
Most initial online home searches start on the bigger national search sites. Places like; Realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow. Although we participate in all of the major search portals we really focus our efforts on one...Realtor.com, this is for a wide range of reasons:
- Size and Scope: They are clearly the biggest. Experian Hitwise is to the web what Nielsen ratings are to TV. They collect data, directly from Internet Service Providers to get accurate data about website traffic volumes. Hitwise has consistently ranked realtor.com as the #1 website in terms of market share of traffic. This isn't just a little more market share it's like double that of number 2. see graphic
- History: The site has been around since 1997 and is the only real estate search site affiliated with the National Association of Realtors. They have relationships with local MLS's and have worked out the whole download thing to the point where their data is solid, in other words if a home is on this site it's for sale! They have built trust.
- Usability: This site has consistently evolved their user interface, so it's pretty user friendly.
So, we understand how important Realtor.com is to the home search process. Instead of relying on automatic feeds, we go in and customize each and every listing on Realtor. We want Buyer's first impressions of your home to be good ones.
