Selling or Buying in Barrington & The Reach of Internet Advertising versus Print Advertising

I had lunch with a friend today and we were discussing internet advertising and how far it can reach versus print advertising and it's limitations. Of course we were talking real estate but the principal applies to much more. Consider the upcoming Black Friday. Many buyers will do research online, go shopping on Friday or the new trend forget Friday and shop on "Cyber Monday" online.

Back to real estate:

There is no doubt as each year passes, more real estate buyers and sellers are using the internet in their pre-buying or selling research.

Sellers want to know what market conditions are like and with many local agents providing regular market reports on their blogs, this information is freely available, published by Realtors and Brokers online with charts and graphs to back up the "speech". I provide markets reports every month for the Barrington area, and quarterly for Wynstone and Lake Barrington Shores, because these areas are my market. Yet as a member of the MLS in Northern Illinois I can prepare market reports for any area I wish because I have access to the data.

Buyers search for homes by city or area from the comfort of home or even office. They can browse through thousands of listings, save favorites, even request more information or showings. It works well because not all buyers want to have to call to get information. They can digest it at their own pace as often as they like while remaining anonymous until they are ready to take the next step.

Tell me you don't like remaining anonymous while you are internet surfing and I'll eat my hat!

So why does the internet have a far wider reach than newspaper print in the real estate world?

• It's available 24/7 365 days a year, and it's updated more than once every day.
• Visitors can sign up to be notified of new listings immediately.
• Any website is world wide, not limited to a few local readers. 35% of my visitors are from around the country and world, and nearly 50% are not locals. That only leaves 15% local visitors. Those 15% might buy a paper but many do not.
• We can publish not just one tiny little photograph but literally hundreds of high definition photos.
• We can expand the information we publish, information relevant to home buyers.
• Virtual tours are easily added to listings.
• Video is an upcoming media, and online its easy to publish. Virtual tours are good, videos are better.
• Visitors can click a bookmark for every page they may want to return to, better than starting over each time, right?