When home buyers want to find a home online, almost twenty percent of them begin their search with a real estate broker or agent's site. That's needed encouragement to real estate professionals and a surprising slight to the large real estate portals and listings services.

The first Gomez.com/Realty Times weekly consumer poll has released results from its December 5th survey question, "When you shop for a home, where do you begin your search?"

Of 400 respondents, home buyers gave the following possible answers and percentages:

• Search engine / real estate portal 37.4 %
• National home listing sites / franchise brand site 17.8 %
• Local community site 10.3 %
• Local real estate broker or agent site 19.6 %
• Newspaper classifieds 14.9 %

"That's good news for the Internet-empowered REALTOR," said Jody Lane, publisher of Agent News and Realty Times.

According to Nick Karris, a senior Internet analyst with Gomez.com, the implications of the poll findings are:

1. Consumers visit a variety of information sources when shopping for a home online
2. Online consumers are finding alternatives to traditional classifieds
3. Content specific portals are the most popular source of information to online shoppers.

But Realtors shouldn't celebrate yet.

"We know from our research that first time buyers need assurance and decision support," explains Karris. "Few of these local sites offer "real estate 101" content and discussion groups which are common to national MLS sites.

According to Gomez research on the Internet, many local sites are lacking in key areas:

• ease of use
• educational content
• regularly updated listings
• complete listings
• property alerts
• broker disclosure
• related service information (mortgage lenders, neighborhood statistics, etc)

The research also found that online shoppers in general shop online because it makes their lives easier. They find it easier to research products and to compare price online.

Lane says, "This is an important heads-up for Realtors to make sure that their sites are more user-friendly, so they can not only hold on to their lead in the poll, but so they can also hold onto their leads and close more transactions."