The Best Places on the Web to Advertise Your Home for Sale

I have often said that 70-80% of home buyers search the web before viewing a home. Thus if you are a seller there is a good chance that the buyer of your home will view the on-line marketing materials before they write an offer on your home. That fact alone should make you jump on the internet and see how and where your home is advertised.

Currently, real estate agents have the ability to track on-line marketing data. We can see how many people viewed our online advertising and we can see where the traffic is coming from. This data is invaluable for sellers to take action on managing a listing. It has become so valuable, that viewing and discussing this data has become common place with my sellers.

In order to better serve my clients, I track the many new real estate search services, (ie. Craigslist, Google Base, Trulia, Oodle, Propsmart, Movoto, Vast, Edgeio, ect…) that are trying to capture the large number of buyer’s eyes that are searching the web. So, this begs the question, what is the best place to post a listing and who has the largest market share for internet real estate searching? In other words, where should your agent be posting your home to get the largest viewer ship possible? Because of the large number of new search tools available, my first assumption was that I would see a fragmenting of market share and that it was important for listing agents to post to all of these services in order to best serve their clients. Although, I still believe that maximum visibility is best and that it is a must to post to all of the real estate search sites, the reality is that there is a clear market share leader in Bay Area real estate listing searches. It is not one of the flashy contenders you might expect.

So, where do a majority of buyers search the web? Above is a graph of marketing data from a 2007 listing that I have sold. Over 2000 people viewed the marketing which proves that the internet is an important place to advertise your home. Where else do over 2000 buyers get and interactive experience with your property? I know for a fact that the buyer of this home first encountered the listing on-line. Thus, it should be interesting to sellers where the majority of their internet advertising is being viewed.

The winner is… Google Base Craigslist! It was amazing to see that 90% of the on-line viewing occurred on Craigslist. That means that the rest of the 7+ companies that the marketing was posted to are fighting over 10% of the remaining viewings. That is approximately 200 or so viewings on the above property. This shows that Craislist has a commanding presence in the Bay Area! This is truly interesting considering Craigslist is the least hi-tech of the above mentioned search sites. It is more like a interactive newspaper classified ad then a slick hi-tech searching device.

I must note that the above data does take into account many but not all of the major stake holders in real estate listing search. There are many other avenues for marketing a property properly for sale (ie. MLS, open houses, the newspaper, realtor.com, private brokerage sites such as redoakrealty.com, individual agent web sites like katieandmark.com, ect…). I will also note that each property in the Bay Area tends to be different from the one next door. So, I approach each of my listings as an exclusive marketing opportunity that needs to be calculated, unique, and individualized.