Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

Of all the real estate blog posts I have read over the past year, very few, if any attempt to get a feel for what their readers think. In fact most of what I see out there in the blogosphere are glorified advertisements touting the author as the only person you should be using to help you buy or sell your next home.

In our office in the Lake Oroville and Paradise real estate markets we attempt to provide not only real estate market information on our blogs, but also a good mix of what is going on in our communities. And while it is easy to provide comment and feedback to each of our posts we realize that not everyone has the time in their hectic lives to sit down and submit written comments on any particular blog post.

Well, providing your opinion just got easier for those interested in the Paradise andLake Oroville housing markets. With the newest feature to my blog site having just been released by REALTY WORLD  you can now provide your opinion with just a quick mouse click or two on what will be a broad range of real estate topics, and even some topics that have nothing to do with the local real estate markets.

Introducing the Poll Question of the Month. Each month (or more often if you wish) I will post a question that you can answer quickly and easily. To the right of this post you will see this month’s question asking your opinion on where you think real estate prices are headed. Simply click on your answer and then click the VOTE button. It really is that easy.

And better yet, if you have a question you would like to see made part of the poll,  just drop me an e-mail and I will consider using your question.

Let me know what you think. This site is as much yours as it is mine.

For real estate print ads that is.

When I first got started in the Oroville real estate business in 1994, virtually all of the advertising  to market a property was done in print media. We used either the local papers, or the traditional real estate magazines, or a combination of the two, to make buyers aware of  properties that were listed for sale. 

After Al Gore invented the internet (sorry for the political satire there) things began to  change. There was a new way of advertising that hardly anybody knew how to take advantage of. I remember a conversation with my then broker, Bob Beever, about the internet. Something neither one of us knew that much about at the time.

He said, “Mark, Why do we even need the internet?” and with my wealth of understanding of technology at the time replied, “I have no idea.”

Despite our lack of understanding the technology at the time, we made the leap of faith to launch one of the very first real estate web sites in the Oroville market.

Fast forwarding to today we find that the internet is by far the dominant media real estate consumers use to find their next home. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2008:

73.6% of All Americans had internet access

78% of all home buyers we using the interenet to find their next home

20% of home buyers used a newspaper or magazine to find their next home

33% of home buyers use the internet to search for a home more than 5 times a month

Being that we are already more than halfway through 2009, it is a pretty good bet that all of these numbers, except the one related to newspaper and magazine users, have increased.

The result of this change in consumer behavior have sent those print publications that depend on the real estate business into a financial nosedive. Causing some major newspapers across the country to eliminate their real estate sections all together. Locally I have seen the results too. The local real estate magazines contain only half the pages they used to have, and our local weekly shopper magazine that at one time had something like 12 pages of real estate ads now has barely 3 pages devoted to real estate.

Interestingly though, as this shift has taken place, many real estate agents and their offices, at least in this town, are still stuck in their old ways; preferring to have little or no internet presence for their seller’s properties. In fact, one of the offices in town that is associated with one of the largest real estate franchises in the world, does not even have it’s own local website, preferring to only use their parent company’s website on which to place their listings. 

I admit that I too am still using print media for my listings. It is something that I would like to discontinue as the resources I expend on print could go a long way toward expanding exposure to my listings online. So why do I do it?  Because many sellers are also not quite up to speed on the technology either. There are some that want to see their properties in print not realizing that only 20% of buyers are actually seeing the property advertised that way. As I continue to counsel sellers on the benefits of online marketing I will redirect resources from print and into more internet marketing.  Fortunately, for my sellers, I have the resources to do both during the transition.

Today’s moral of the story for sellers: Print media is quickly becoming an thing of the past. Insist that your agent market your property where  buyers are actually looking: Online!  And be sure to check out their personal websites before letting them work for you.