According to the results of a survey conducted by Classified Intelligence, a research publication for the classified advertising industry, and Realty Times, the leading online real estate news and advice service, U.S. Realtors are still buying print advertising -- but would prefer not to.
Realtors are spending more money on advertising, but they're not particularly satisfied with any advertising options, found Jim Townsend, editor of Classified Intelligence.
"While many U.S. newspapers are enjoying a banner year for print real estate ads, Realtors indicate a reluctance -- if not resentment -- for being there," he says.
- Thirty-six percent of Realtors surveyed spent 10 percent or less of their total ad budget on print ads in their local newspapers.
- Nineteen percent spent less than 20 percent of their total ad budgets on newspaper print ads.
- Seventeen percent of Realtors didn't advertise at all in newspaper print.
Anyway you look at it, the writing, pardon the pun, appears to be on the wall. With nearly 51 percent of respondents promoting their services on free classified sites like craigslist.com and Google Base, Realtors paying for classifieds in the stagnant medium of print will be less popular as time goes on.
Realtors, says Townsend, are seeking more trackable results and better leads from all ad publishers, and principally from print where they feel circulation numbers are no longer adequate to making ad purchasing decisions.
Townsend says that in June 2006, the Newspaper Association of America reported first-quarter revenues up 26.3 percent over first-quarter 2005, but Realtors may not continue such spending once sellers no longer expect print advertising. Currently 78 percent of repeat buyers and 82 percent of first-time buyers use the Internet in their home searches. Townsend predicts that "the lion's share of advertising will follow the audience, and the audience is online."
Confounding critics who say that the Internet should have made commissions come down because of wide-spread advertising of listings and the fact that buyers now do much of the heavy-lifting in searching for homes, Townsend confirms what Realty Times has always maintained -- that the Internet has actually made marketing more expensive for real estate agents because it has added another medium and Realtors aren't quite yet able to give up traditional means, such as print advertising and direct marketing, due to sellers' expectations.
A whopping 58 percent of agents surveyed said they were spending more on advertising in 2006 than in 2005, while 34 percent said they were spending about the same and only eight percent said they were spending less.
Says Dave Liniger, founder of RE/MAX International, "The biggest challenge that Realtors are facing is that the Internet did not make it more cost-effective to advertise, because to be effective, an agent has to advertise in more arenas than they had to 10 years ago."
Realtor respondents said their advertising dollars were about evenly divided between investing in personal websites and traditional advertising, such as print and yard signs, online advertising, and direct marketing.
In line with the National Association of Realtors' findings in agent advertising spending in 2005, the survey found that most Realtors spend between $1,000 and $10,000 annually on total advertising, including yard signs, billboards, flyers, print, the Internet and their personal websites. Thirty-three percent spend more than $10,000 annually, while 26 percent spend between $5,000 and $10,000 annually. Thirty-three percent spent between $1,000 and $5,000 and nine percent spent less than $1,000.
Of the 58 percent of Realtors who said they'd be spending more money on advertising this year than last, 45 percent said they would spend between $1,000 and $5,000 more.
In allocating their budgets, Realtors get the word out on the street via flyers, yard signs, and billboards -- still the top category of spending, as it was in 2005. Print advertising is a relatively modest portion of the pie. Thirty-six percent of respondents said that up to 10 percent of their advertising dollars go to newspaper advertising.
The largest chunk of advertising money is spent on maintaining a personal website, where 67 percent of respondents spend 30 percent or less of their total marketing budget.
Newspapers that have an online extension collect 20 percent of 33 percent of respondents' ad monies. Only 26 percent were spending 20 percent or less on local-search pay-per-click advertising. Sixty-one percent of respondents say they are not spending anything on online newspapers, and 58 percent said they weren't spending anything on local-search advertising.
Fifty-two percent of respondents said they were utilizing free classified sites such as craigslist.com (67 percent,) Google Base (45 percent,) and MSN Live (33 percent.)
Surprisingly, direct marketing is still a serious expenditure for Realtors. Thirty-one percent of respondents spend up to 10 percent of their advertising budget on direct marketing, while 24 percent spend up to 20 percent. Thirteen percent of respondents spend up to 30 percent of their advertising budgets on direct marketing.
Because many Internet housing ads have a long shelf-life as long as the agent has the listing, print media is going to continue to be challenged to produce stronger, more trackable results. Realtors told Classified Intelligence, "Give me results I can track," and "Reduce the price, or provide a longer shelf life." Others said, "Classified print just does not work and it is WAY too expensive, " and "Online is the way to go -- that's where the consumers are."
To access the complete report, contact Jim Townsend at 
