If your agent does not advertise your home widely on the internet, you are quite simply losing out on the best chance you have of selling it.

US National Association of Realtors results showed that the majority of home seekers (35 percent) used the internet as a first step in the search process, visiting property portals more than individual real estate company websites.

According to Berry Everitt, managing director of the Chas Everitt International property group this was confirmed in the latest statistics released by the US National Association of Realtors (NAR) following its 2011 survey of more than 80 000 homebuyers.

The results showed that while prospective homebuyers used multiple sources of information in their search for a property, far and away the most used sources were the internet (88 percent) and estate agents (87 percent).

The majority of home seekers (35 percent) used the internet as a first step in the search process, visiting property portals more than individual real estate company websites, he says.

“Only 21 percent contacted an estate agent first while 8 percent began by driving around their preferred areas looking for homes for sale.”

Everitt says even more telling is the fact that 40 percent of the homebuyers surveyed by the NAR said they had found the home they actually ended up purchasing on the internet.

Some 35 percent said they had found their property through an agent and 25 percent found their homes by other means, he says.  

He explains that although such exact statistics are not yet available for South Africa, he believes the preference for internet searches is very similar although print advertising does still have an important role to play because easy and regular access to the Internet is somewhat less widespread among prospective buyers.

Meanwhile, a just-released study by the Mortgage Bankers Association shows to what extent buyers are still driving the market, despite a lack of access to finance.

Titled “The Great Recession and Attitudes Towards Homebuying”, the study reveals that almost 80 percent of US households think that now is a good time to buy property, even though the country is battling high unemployment and slow economic growth, Everitt notes.

Home sellers on the other hand are very negative about the market, with only 7 percent believing that this is a good time to sell, he says.    

He says the study also shows that the positive sentiment towards home buying is particularly strong among young, well-educated households.

This is attributable mostly to low home prices and low home loan interest rates.

We believe South Africa is very similar with lots of demand evident and a significant increase in sales only being curtailed at the moment by the difficulties many prospective buyers are experiencing in obtaining home loans.

He adds that this suggests that sales will spike as soon as South African consumers have completed the process of cleaning up their credit records and cutting their debt loads, which many have already been doing diligently for the past few years.

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