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Women Browse For New Housing More Than Men

by Broderick Perkins

Who said women are technophobes?

When it comes to searching online for newly built homes, it's most likely a younger woman doing the browsing for housing.

Among the 5,486 participants who answered American Home Guide's survey to profile online new home shoppers, more than 60 percent were women and 73 percent of them were younger than 45. The smaller group of men shoppers were older. Only 59 percent of them were younger than 45.

"These results clearly dispel the dated stereotypes of women being uncomfortable with computers and technology," said Barry Lynn, president and founder of American Home Guides, a Web site which operates house-hunting (for newly built homes) Web sites covering 28 states and Puerto Rico.

The study is in line with others which say women have been a major force behind home purchases both since the advent of the Internet and before.

The survey, conducted during June and July this year, says the prototypical online home buyer is a 26- to 35-year-old woman with an annual household income between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.

She's most likely looking for a single-family home priced between $100,000 and $250,000 somewhere in the southern United States, and she's likely to purchase it in the next three months.

The Internet is by far her primary source of new home information, and she uses it between one and three hours a week during her search -- which she conducts without the help of a real estate agent.

The survey also found women spend more time surfing for a home -- about 26 percent of the men who responded to the survey said they search online for more than three hours a week, while more than 32 percent of the women reported spending that much time online looking for a home.

"Women ... are a bit more patient, and more interested in details," Lynn said.

The survey also found:

More than 14 percent of the respondents were older than 55, representing a group 3.5 percent larger than the respondents age 25 and under.

The Internet was the primary source of information used by those surveyed -- 73 percent of the respondents said they did so. That statistic is misleading because the Web site only surveyed American Home Guide visitors.

"Obviously, we expected the Internet to be the top choice among online home buyers, but the gaping margin between it and the other sources is pretty dramatic," said Lynn.

"This result is consistent with what the National Association of Realtors announced in their own recent survey, where 57 percent more people reported first learning about the home they bought on the Internet than through newspapers," he added.

There were 1,247 participants who reported using a real estate agent in their new home search, but even within this sub-group, the Internet is still considered the primary source of information, by a margin of 509 votes.

That is another misleading statistic. Many new home buyers typically do not use a real estate agent, except in soft new home markets.

"Online buyers are capable of finding listings on their own, and even younger and less-experienced buyers are looking to agents only to walk them through the complex final details of a home purchase," Lynn said.

More than 51 percent of Internet home buyers plan to purchase their homes in the next six months.

Nearly 83 percent plan to purchase their homes in the next twelve months.

More than 81 percent of respondents with an annual income higher than $1 million spend more than an hour a week searching for a new home online.

Published: September 4, 2003

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home.

The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services.

The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home.

Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News.

Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications.

In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.

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