Examining Consumer Trends and Real Estate

By Linda Erbele, Real Estate Business Magazine, April/May 2007

What the Web, green building, diverse housing needs and more really mean for the industry and your brokerage.

Sunday afternoon drives with the family to look at houses have gone the way of walking across the room to change the TV channel. Today a family is more likely to spend Sunday with the younger children clicking their handheld video games, the teenagers happily chatting in MySpace on their laptops and Mom and Dad viewing the room dimensions and backyard features of houses, possibly hundreds of miles away, all together in the den with the game on TV.

Last year, Mike Long, CEO of Move.com told the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), "Searching for real estate information has become one of the three largest consumer interest categories online. In the U.S. each year 100 million consumers go online to look at real estate, more than 1 in 3 Americans. Looking and dreaming about houses has become a major entertainment category as well as a practical process for those in need of buying, selling or renting a home." While some baby boomers may still enjoy driving around a neighborhood, taking note of yard signs and calling the agent, most have quickly learned they can cover a lot more territory from the desk chair.