JohnAmardeil.com

A study published this week confirms what we’ve been saying all along: consumers’ online experiences are increasingly influencing their home buying activity offline.

According to the report, a whopping 90 percent of homebuyers searched online during the home buying process, with 52 percent choosing that as their first step in the process.

For an idea of how we rock our clients’ online world, visit the eBAM section of our website.

Called “The Digital House Hunt: Consumer and Market Trends in Real Estate,” the report includes custom research from the U.S. National Association of Realtors’ 2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, combined with internal Google data and research.

Particularly interesting to BAM were three findings:

• First, 31 percent of  home buyers who took action on a real-estate website were aged 25-34, the biggest share of any age group,
• Second, video played an important role in consumers’ search process, specifically when they wished to find out more about a particular community, tour the inside of a home, or obtain general information,
• Third, about one-fifth of real estate related searches occurred on mobile devices — a 120 percent year-over-year increase.

These findings confirm that video plays a major role in this online research process. They also confirm that while having an online presence will drive traffic and generate leads for any demographic, it’s especially important in the case of a community targeting younger homebuyers. (However, the data still show people of all ages do go online to research the home buying process.)

This is why we strongly recommend to all our clients that they advertise online and create SEO-optimized websites, as well as an active social media presence. As for video, we aim to revamp our efforts in 2013.

A statement from Patrick Grandinetti, Google’s head of real estate, does a fine job of summarizing the report’s findings — as well as our recommendations for the past few years:

“Online technologies are [increasingly] driving offline behaviors, and home buying is no exception. (…) The real estate industry is smart to target these people where they look for and consume information — for example, through paid search, relevant websites, video environments, and mobile applications.”

Did you read the report? Did any of its findings surprise you in any way?

The home of your wife’s dreams?

Experience has taught me women tend to call the shots in the home buying process. If you’re in the industry, I’m sure that’s your experience as well.

This is why many of us implicitly market homes for women, highlighting the features that we think appeal to them.

But what exactly is it that female homebuyers want? Experience can certainly give you an idea. But valuable as it may be, experience is a subjective thing, especially when it’s not backed up by studies.

Thankfully, according to Builder Magazine, two U.S. builders made it a point to narrow down the factors that make female homebuyers tick, going so far as to take women-centric design studies.

They seem to have succeeded — one of them, Patcon Construction, continued to sell homes in new Hampshire and Maine even as its competitors couldn’t, while the other, Hugh A. Fisher of Deer Brook Development Corp., quadrupled his business in the middle of the U.S. housing recession.

Ironically perhaps, their findings not just confirm many a builder’s experience, but also a few gender stereotypes. For example, when men look at a floorplan they think about how they will relax in the house, while women focus on how the family will live in the house and how they will work in it.

Women also tend to focus on organizing, having convenient access to laundry rooms, and making sure their husbands have a place where they can drop their wallet and keys (which apparently they don’t want us dropping on the kitchen counter).

Read the article here, or check out this survey, which helps women find the type of floorplan that best suits their personality.

Have you ever marketed homes explicitly for women? What’s your take on all this?