While their real estate ventures are small, sites like Google and Craigslist are reshaping how real estate professionals reach potential buyers and sellers.
Listings of real estate for sale on Craigslist, which features free classified ads, rose to 335,126 in March, triple the level a year earlier. Google is testing a tool that helps users sort through the proliferation of real estate sites, including Trulia.com, Oodle.com, and Propsmart.com. Google had 89 million visitors in February.
Observers say that the biggest change will be the increasing availability of real estate information. Unlike other online-driven retail, buying and selling property is complex so people will continue to need help. But the increasing ease with which the availability of property can be advertised may encourage buyers and sellers to use real estate professionals differently and more selectively, which would have an impact on commissions, says Abdullah Yavas, a professor of real estate at Pennsylvania State University.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, James R. Hagerty and Kevin J. Delaney (04/06/06)
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