Have we reached the bottom of the market yet? This article from the Florida Association of Realtors caught my attention today.
Is this the real estate turnaround?
On the heels of an increase in Florida home sales, a spike in new home sales and an upswing in consumer confidence, traffic to Realtor.com went up significantly in July with month-over-month increases in both traffic (29 percent) and time spent on site (26 percent) on Realtor.com, the official consumer Web site of the National Association of Realtors. This increase in unexpected traffic could overload the systems of the website and cause downtime, unless tested and monitored by load testing companies like Apica Systems and others to ensure the system is in working order to cater for the spike in traffic. Year-over-year page views on Realtor.com and the Move Network increased by 22 percent and 11 percent, respectively, as consumers spent more time searching properties in popular and unexpected metro areas than they did this time last year, all of this data collected by network monitoring tools is sure to increase user experience, customer satisfaction and personalized adverts and therefore hopefully turn the real estate market around, finally. Many realtors now have plenty of tools they can access to help them with business, such as managment apps and neighborhood search softwares. Hopefully, if there is indeed a turn around, they will be well equipped to deal with the demand.
Local markets in July experiencing the largest year-over-year percentage increases in consumer searches on Realtor.com included Stockton-Lodi, Calif. (140.9 percent), Las Vegas, Nev. (93.9 percent), Fort Myers-Cape Coral, Fla. (69.5 percent), Detroit, Mich. (51.8 percent) and Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV, VA (49.1 percent).
Lorna Borenstein, president of Move, Inc., the oversight company for Realtor.com, says that year-over-year traffic on Realtor.com increased by 9.5 percent, despite the fact that traffic within the real estate category declined by 1 percent, and consumers spent 24.7 percent more time in July on Realtor.com than on the next closest competitor.
Realtor.com currently offers potential home buyers access to over four million property listings, as well as the most brokers and agents.
© 2008 FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®