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by Broderick Perkins
Who said women are technophobes?
When it comes to searching online for newly built homes,
it's most likely a younger woman doing the browsing for housing.
Among the 5,486 participants who answered American Home
Guide's survey to profile online new home shoppers, more
than 60 percent were women and 73 percent of them were younger
than 45. The smaller group of men shoppers were older. Only
59 percent of them were younger than 45.
"These results clearly dispel the dated stereotypes
of women being uncomfortable with computers and technology," said
Barry Lynn, president and founder of American Home Guides,
a Web site which operates house-hunting (for newly built
homes) Web sites covering 28 states and Puerto Rico.
The study is in line with others which say women have been
a major force behind home purchases both since the advent
of the Internet and before.
The survey, conducted during June and July this year, says
the prototypical online home buyer is a 26- to 35-year-old
woman with an annual household income between $50,000 and
$100,000 a year.
She's most likely looking for a single-family home priced
between $100,000 and $250,000 somewhere in the southern United
States, and she's likely to purchase it in the next three
months.
The Internet is by far her primary source of new home information,
and she uses it between one and three hours a week during
her search -- which she conducts without the help of a real
estate agent.
The survey also found women spend more time surfing for
a home -- about 26 percent of the men who responded to the
survey said they search online for more than three hours
a week, while more than 32 percent of the women reported
spending that much time online looking for a home.
"Women ... are a bit more patient, and more interested
in details," Lynn said.
The survey also found:
- More than 14 percent of the respondents
were older than 55, representing a group 3.5 percent
larger than the
respondents
age 25 and under.
- The Internet was the primary source of
information used by those surveyed -- 73 percent of
the respondents said they
did so. That statistic is misleading because the Web
site only surveyed American Home Guide visitors.
"Obviously, we expected the Internet to be the top
choice among online home buyers, but the gaping margin between
it and the other sources is pretty dramatic," said Lynn.
"This result is consistent with what the National Association
of Realtors announced in their own recent survey, where 57
percent more people reported first learning about the home
they bought on the Internet than through newspapers," he
added.
- There were 1,247 participants who reported using
a real estate agent in their new home search, but even within
this sub-group, the Internet is still considered the primary
source of information, by a margin of 509 votes.
That is another misleading statistic. Many new home buyers
typically do not use a real estate agent, except in soft
new home markets.
"Online buyers are capable of finding listings on their
own, and even younger and less-experienced buyers are looking
to agents only to walk them through the complex final details
of a home purchase," Lynn said.
- More than 51 percent
of Internet home buyers plan to purchase their homes
in the next six months.
- Nearly 83 percent plan to purchase their
homes in the next twelve months.
- More than 81 percent of
respondents with an annual income higher than $1 million
spend more than an hour a week searching
for a new home online.
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