Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Surveys Say...

Two recent surveys underscore just how pervasive technology has become to the working life of real estate professionals. The annual Realtor Technology Report conduced by NAR’s Center for Real Estate Technology, and the California Association of Realtor’s own 2008 Use of Technology Study.

Across the board, the most used hardware hardware, as indicated by NAR members, are cell phones(42% smartphones, 55% standard cellphone), digital cameras(87%), desktop PCs(64%), notebooks(55%), and GPS navigation devices(34%).

Real estate remains a PC world: only four percent of respondents use a Mac. Sixty-nine percent of respondents have some form of mapping on their website. Of them, 71 percent offer map-based searching.

Social networking is emerging as an area of keen interest, primarily as a way to find consumers. A full third are now involved, defined here as social networking sites, blogs or Web forums. Most popular sites include Linked-In, Facebook, and ActiveRain, Seven percent of Realtors now maintain their own blog.

There’s much much more in the survey and you can find the complete report here.

CAR’s survey posed some different questions, for insights into other aspects of technology usage. Forty five percent of respondents said the primary benefit of their tech tools is the competitive edge it gives them in the field. They also report 48 percent of their business originated online this year.

Thirty-two percent of CAR members now carry a laptop, and for 70 percent of them the primary use is for listing presentations. Keeping up with email is a major challenge of business today, according to 88 percent of respondents.

But they are doing a good job of it: 32 percent respond to client email immediately; 34 percent within an hour.

There’s more here.

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