Which is the best home buying site on the Internet? According to the latest independent research survey performed by Gomez.com, 15 top real estate sites were ranked for excellence, but not always in the order consumers or the industry might guess.

In a Realty Times exclusive, Gomez.com announces the results of its Winter 1999 Home Buying Internet scorecards, the first comprehensive independent survey of its kind.

The best overall score went to Realtor.com, but only by a nose. Following close behind, by less than 1/10th of a point is HomeAdvisor. And third place went to not another listings giant, but to Cendant franchiser - Coldwell Banker.

Firm		Score
1. Realtor.com (review)		6.42
2. HomeAdvisor (review)		6.32
3. Coldwell Banker (review)		5.15
4. iOwn.com (review)		4.95
5. Homes.com (review)		4.76
6. Real Estate Yahoo (review)		4.48
7. Remax (review)		4.22
8. Owners.com (review)		4.05
9. GMAC Real Estate (review)		3.93
10. HomeSeekers.com (review)		3.83
11. Century 21 (review)		3.69
12. Prudential (review)		3.60
13. CyberHomes (review)		3.60
14. RealEstate.com (review)		3.24
15. ERA.com (review)		2.48

Gomez, an online decision support company, is used by consumers to evaluate the top sites for such products as mortgages, insurance, airlines, and many others. The release of the home buying scorecards marks the first time the company has ventured into the home buying arena. The survey used 200 criteria as well as interviews with company executives, mystery customer reports and other evaluative measures to tabulate the results.

What makes the survey unique is not only the fact that this is the first independent survey of its kind, but that the focus is geared for consumer use. Gomez.com subcategorizes the information according to user profiles - traditional home buyers, independent home buyers, and relocation home buyers. Not all firms cater to every profile, according to the site's methodology, which means that the best overall firm may not, in fact, be the best for a given customer profile and his or her "unique buying motivations, needs or intentions."

This is the caveat that allowed HomeAdvisor to close the listings distance to step on Realtor.com's heels, and Coldwell Banker to vault ahead of other franchises with their property disclosures (Virtual Open House.) While Realtor.com scored higher with traditional home buyers, which the site heralded in its own consumer survey, HomeAdvisor nudged ahead with relocation and independent buyers.

"If you look at the traditional home buyer who wants to work closely with an agent and pay full commission," says Gomez.com real estate analyst Nick Karris, "they aren't going to spend a lot of time searching through properties. Realtor.com is the clear choice for the "old school" buyer."

Continues Karris, "The independent home buyer who favors the do-it-yourself approach is younger and more web-savvy. They want complete information and disclosure. Homeadvisor offers extensive educontent explaining complex issues such as disclosure and buyer's brokerage, so for the independent buyer, Homeadvisor does a better job."

There's a clear message for the online real estate industry that brand is less important than information and tools to Internet shoppers. "When a consumer goes into the search engine and types in a basic key word search, those search results are ranked by relevance, not by brand name. The consumer scans the leading sites to evaluate content, so it is all about content and decision tools. Some of the sites with big brand names offer very little in decision tools.

"What best serves the company is to educate and inform the consumer so that the leads are strong leads. Or do you want to generate as much traffic as possible even if the consumers are less educated and don't turn into satisfied customers?"

The survey received mixed reviews from the industry. "I'm not pleased - I want to be number one in everything," said Barbara Amster, president of Realtor.com. "Despite having six million page view a day, it looks like the only weakness is our lack of comps. We will have to put those on the site in fairly short order."

Amster adds, "We are pleased to see our partners (GMAC and Coldwell) do well."

Sara Narbaitz, product manager for MSN Homeadvisor said, "We are excited about it (the survey.) Homeadvisor ranked number one in the three out of four categories.

"We have been saying all along that quality is more important than number of listings. It takes three times as many clicks to see a listing on other sites as it does on Homeadvisor."

A third-place ranking for Coldwell Banker doesn't surprise Regina Taylor, senior vice president of marketing. She lists many Internet firsts for the company including: first franchise to have a Web presence; first to advertise its Internet site nationally, and; first to offer email new listings and disclosure and complete property information to consumers.

"We put a lot of focus on empowering the customer to do business the way they want to," explains Taylor. "A number of years ago we realized the potential of the Internet and decided to make it a cornerstone of our business. Once we had that foundation, we built the functionality around it."

Internet gold has been based in the past on traffic numbers, page views, then stickiness. But the real value is in sell throughs or leads passed to site partners. "The real bottom line is not traffic numbers but how many turn into customers," says Karris. "By the time they contact an agent, consumers are ready to buy and agents can spend their time more efficiently, rather than trying to control the consumer by withholding information in the purchase process."

If the industry wants to use the survey results to make improvements to make a friendlier online experience for consumers, Karris recommends looking not at number of listings but the quality of information they contain. "Many listings did not provide the amount of detail that consumers want to evaluate whether the listing price is a fair price and that is where the whole industry needs to improve," he says.

"Out of the top 15 sites, only iOWN and Yahoo! offer access to FSBOs and MLS Listings, " observes Karris. "As the Internet user becomes more educated in the process and utilizing listings to find properties, we will see a large migration toward menu pricing from agents and seller-directed transactions."

Another weakness of the sites collectively is the lack of access to agents. "We have found through our Gomez.com/Realty Times Quick Polls that most consumers want to find a good agent who is knowledgeable in a local market first. Yet, all of these sites have very limited search tools for agents. Only RE/MAX.com allows consumers to search for an agent with email and a personal photograph online.

"Finally, it is an inevitable trend that consumers will do more of their homework first before submitting an offer," concludes Karris.

Published: January 19, 2000

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