RISMEDIA, June 2, 2009-Trulia.com, known for being one of the best places to start a real estate search, released the results of a survey conducted on their behalf by Harris Interactive® showing that U.S. home buyers* are twice as likely to use online sources than print sources to find open house information. Sixty-two percent of U.S. home buyers reported using/planning to use online sites to find open houses, compared to 53% who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36% who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third (31%), who reported using/planning to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyers to find open houses.
“The real estate section of the weekend newspaper is no longer the go-to resource for open houses,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia. “Home buyers are increasingly going online to not only search for the most up to date listings but also to obtain rich information about the neighborhood, schools, and local shops. Both the Trulia.com site and our iPhone application allow home buyers to search for open houses in neighborhoods that interest them, plus they can sign up for e-mail alerts on our website letting them know when new open houses are listed. The print newspaper can’t offer that type of experience.”
“We used to see home buyers walk into open houses with a newspaper in their hands,” said Aman Daro, vice president of Integrated Marketing at McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco, “but now they walk in with print outs of their search on the Web. What’s more, consumers are walking in very educated from their online research-they know details about the property and the neighborhood, and are more highly engaged in the process than the causal lookers of years past.”
Key Survey Results
– Key sources for open house information: 62% of home buyers reported using/planning to use online sources to find open houses, compared to 53% who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36% who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third, 31%, who reported using/planning to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyers
– Online as primary resource: 41% of home buyers cited online sources as their primary resource, 14% cited print sources as their primary resource
– 91% of home buyers attended/plan to attend open houses during the home buying process
According to the company, Trulia began displaying open house information in March 2008, enabling consumers to filter search results and set up free e-mail alerts for upcoming open houses. The number of listings with open house information on Trulia grew by 65% from January-April 2009; usage of Trulia’s open house filters grew by 39% over the same period. Home buyers can also see upcoming open houses for areas in which they been looking on the Trulia.com homepage newsfeed. Making it easier to find open houses on the go, Trulia’s free iPhone application allows users to filter for open houses in either their current or other specified location for the same day or the next weekend.
This April 2009 survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive via its QuickQuery(SM) online omnibus service on behalf of Trulia between April 23-27, 2009 among 2,715 U.S. adults aged 18 years and older, of whom 192 purchased a home in the past 12 months or plan to purchase a home in the next 12 months. Results were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and propensity to be online. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact Katie Wickham at Katie@trulia.com.
*For the purposes of this survey we have defined “home buyers” as U.S. adults ages 18+ who have purchased a home in the past 12 months or who plan to purchase a home in the next 12 months (n=192).
For more information, visit http://www.trulia.com/.
