Once again, our friends at the California Association of Realtors have released another report full of good information about the habits of real estate buyers in their state, the 2009 Survey of California Home Buyers. While some of the buying statistics in the report may be very specific to California (for example, 38% of purchases were a REO/bank-owned property), what can be applied broadly is HOW and WHERE people are shopping.
Over half (55%) of those who reported using the Internet as a tool in the home buying process used Zillow. Realtor.com continued to be the most used site as 89% of buyers used it; with individual real estate company sites at 81%; individual real estate sites were used 66% of the time. Yahoo! Real Estate scored with 53% and Craigslist was at 49%.
If you are a member of the association, the full report is free to download. If you aren’t a member, you can get it for $29.95.