Study: How Online Is Driving Offline

Last year at this time, we saw several big reports showing how clearly the web is influencing the real estate market, with more consumers than ever beginning their home searches online. Here we are again in the early part of the year, and Google and the National Association of REALTORS® have a new report on online habits and real estate.

What did they learn this time around? Real estate-related searches have more than doubled in last 4 years.

The report, The Digital House Hunt: Consumer and Market Trends in Real Estate, includes custom research from NAR's 2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers in addition to internal Google data.

Over the past four years, real estate-related searches on Google.com rose 253 percent and 22 percent on annual basis in the third quarter. Twenty percent of these searches occurred on mobile devices — a 120 percent increase year-over-year.

Nine out of 10 house hunters searched online during the homebuying process with 52 percent making that their launching pad in the search. Search engine users were 9 percent more likely to click on a real estate brand website than those who didn't use searches.

Of course, tablets and mobile devices played a huge role in these numbers increasing over the last four years, and video also contributed.

Homebuyers used video for a variety of research needs, the report said. People who used video for home research were also likely to use it to learn about a specific community, take a home tour, or obtain general information.

To view the original article, visit the ReachFactor blog.