The percentage increase in online visitors to a for sale by owner (FSBO) website was second in the nation only to America Online's real estate center and online real estate advertising revenues are poised to surpass those spent on newspaper classifieds.

The two recent news items underscore the quantum shifts occurring in the real estate market.

Nielsen//NetRatings said earlier this week AOL's real estate area visitors grew by nearly 2 million new visitors from 855,000 in November 2004, to 2.67 million in April 2005, for an increase of 212 percent. ForSaleByOwner.com attracted 581,000 new visitors in April, up 142 percent from 409,000 in November.

That suggests more consumers are taking home selling into their own hands, Nielsen reported.

"Savvy Internet users are leveraging online resources for real estate purchasing and selling," said Iris Cumberbatch, senior financial services analyst, at Nielsen//NetRatings.

The most popular real estate website, Realtor.com grew from 4.27 million visitors to 5.75 million during the same period, Nielsen said.

"Because of the widespread net cast by the Internet, home sellers are using local online classifieds, such as Craigslist, to sell their homes, and home buyers are accessing sites such as Realtor.com to conduct their own property research," Cumberbatch added.

She also said, "While most homes are still bought or sold via real estate agencies, consumers surfing the Web have more direct and better access to real estate property information than they had previously, arming them with information with which they can make more informed buying or selling decisions."

Renters are at it big time online too with both Rent.com and RentNet among the Top 10 fastest growing websites -- by numbers of unique visitors. Rent.com grew by 86 percent while RentNet's visitors increased by 48 percent. Century 21 was the only major brand real estate company in the Top 10 with a 87 percent growth rate, Nielsen reported.

Perhaps revealing the hot real estate market's attraction for speculators, RealtyTrac.com, a national foreclosure listings website, was the third fastest growing real estate website, moving up at the rate of 94 percent during the six-month period.

With 21.6 million browsing for housing in April -- 15 percent of the active Internet population -- it's not surprising Borrell Associates predicts online real estate advertising spending will eclipse newspaper classifieds before the end of the decade.

Classified and local advertising researcher and consultant Borrell reported later this week online real estate advertising will reach more than $3 billion in 2009, totaling more than 34 percent of all real estate advertising expenditures. This year, online realty ads should bring in $1.8 billion, a 55 percent increase from a year ago, Borrell said.

"The accelerated online advertising spent by real estate professionals could exceed $1.8 billion in 2005, with even faster migration of dollars from traditional print to online expected in the next four years," said Peter Conti, vice president of Borrell Associates Inc.

"This sudden growth indicates that agents, brokers and developers have moved from the experimentation phase and are beginning to commit sizable portions of their marketing budgets to online media," Conti added.

The Internet is the source of industry's toughest competition.

Conti also said the Nielsen ratings indicate the FSBO market has become a new growth category and that Borrell may soon take a closer look at advertising expenditures in that sector.

"It seems like it has now become another important topic. Newspapers are leery of how to handle FSBO ads because they are afraid of upsetting their advertisers. The large portion of their ad dollars come from brokers. FSBOs account for 15 to 20 percent of all sales, but some percentage of that eventually goes to a real estate agent," said Conti.

But it's not just FSBOs.

In the midst of the Nielsen and Borrell reports this week, realty trend watcher Stefan Swanepoel of RealSure Consulting announced the "Top 20 Business Trends Impacting the Future of the Residential Real Estate Industry" and placed "A Smorgasbord of New Business Models" in the No. 2 spot behind "The Rebirth of A New Middleman" (a position to facilitate Internet-generated leads).

Calling the existing traditional six or seven percent commission-based transaction "outdated," Swanepoel says progressive real estate companies are offering buyers and sellers deals that include flat fees, fee-for-services, free-listing, rebates, discounts and a host of new options that give new meaning to the hackneyed phrase "In real estate, everything is negotiable."

The consumer-driven trend toward alternative real estate options was starkly apparent earlier this year when Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500 jumped Help-U-Sell from 98 to 44 in the 500 list, and listed the franchise operation as the only real estate company ranked among the 20 Fastest Growing Franchises in America.

Listed at 15 in the Top 20 franchise list, the Help-U-Sell franchise is the industry's long-time and largest set-fee real estate company. It also allows FSBOs to advertise for free.

"The strong surge in technology has created many new companies in the real estate industry. Many of them have become household names and gone public in a few short years," said Swanepoel.

Technology also finds industry factions toe-to-toe battling over the digital advertising turf.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating real estate practices it alleges could keep commissions high, could block access to certain listings via the Internet and could squeeze out low-cost brokers by changing requirements for holding a brokerage license.