Target Your Real Estate Marketing for Success

Detailed Buyer and Seller Profiles – Part One

Just how well do you know your buyers and sellers? The better you understand your target audience, the more equipped you are to help them meet their goals. Fine-tune your real estate marketing program with buyer and seller profiles from the National Association of Realtors®.

In this first of a two-part series, we’ll take a look at what makes up today’s real estate buyer.

BUYERS

* Is there any doubt that technology has affected the typical home search? In 1981, personal computers and cell phones were barely on the horizon. Today, 95 percent of home buyers use the Internet as a search tool.

* There has been an upward shift in the age profiles of buyers. The median age of first-time buyers has gone from 29 to 33, while the age of repeat buyers has leaped from 36 to 56.

* 87 percent of buyers finance their purchase, compared to 93 percent in 1981. But the typical down payment has dropped nearly a third, from 20 percent to 13 percent.

* At 10 percent in 1981 compared to nine percent today, the share of single males purchasing homes has remained relatively stable. Meanwhile, the share of single females purchasing homes has nearly doubled, from 11 percent to 19 percent.

* While buyers rely heavily on the Internet, 87 percent of recent purchasers used the services of a real estate agent or broker, while another seven percent worked directly with a builder or builder’s agent.

* If you need more evidence that it’s important to understand your audience, 52 percent of buyers said help in finding the right home was number one on their list of criteria for choosing an agent.