Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. NAR(R)

The annual report I value most is the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. This report is packed full of useful statistics for agents and brokers who are looking to educate themselves about the sales process from the perspective of the Home Buyer and Seller. It clearly shows where agents should be focusing their marketing dollars (hint: not the newspaper) and also provides important details about the Buyers and Sellers experience during the sales transaction. Here are some highlights:

90% of consumers did online research before they bought their last home.

42% of buyers found the home they ended up purchasing on the internet, while only 1% of buyers found their home in the newspaper.

63% of Agents marketing budget still goes to offline advertising (newspaper, flyers, etc).

Consumers looked at an average of 10 homes over a period of 12 weeks before purchasing.

89% of Buyers said they would use their agent again or recommend their agent to others (74% said definitely, 15% said probably).

Only 10% of Buyers used an agent they had used previously.

84% of Sellers said they would use their agent again or recommend their agent to others (66% said definitely, 18% said probably).

Only 23% of Sellers will used an agent they had used previously.

The vast majority of consumers — 74% buyers and 66% sellers — say they would “definitely” use their real estate agent again or recommend that person to others. Yet only 10 percent of buyers and 23 percent of sellers actually used the same real estate professional that they worked with from their previous transaction. Why is there a big difference? One reason, undoubtedly, was the lack of consistent communication.

Your time is important and your clients are important. Clients whom you already closed a deal with need to feel that you care for them even after closing that deal. So you try to keep that communication going by checking up on them from time to time. No matter how you try to stay in contact with them, reality pushes you away from doing that simply because you need to attend to your new clients. Maintaining communication from previous clients is just as important as attending to the new ones. So, how do you make sure that you are not letting your closed clients fall through the cracks? Let a drip email system lend a helping hand. This way, all your clients would know that you truly care for them and not just closing that deal. As Patch Adams would say, in treating a disease you either win or lose in the end, but treating a patient, you win, no matter what the outcome.