I recently saw a statistic that said 82% of people who bought a house in the last year started their search on the internet.  I thought this number seemed low; it has been my experience over the last year that most everyone I have worked with concerning Hilton Head Island Real Estate has already researched the market and have ideas about what they are interested in.

In the “old days” of Real Estate, clients would come to the office and would tell us what they were looking for, we would make suggestions and then we would go out and look at property.  In today’s “internet age”, clients come into the office, tell us what they are looking for as well as what they would like to see and why.  If we make suggestions they sometimes say that they are not interested in that house as they have already seen it on the internet. 

Information is key and many times the buyer has the same information as Realtors.  In the “old days”, we were the keeper of the information – now, everyone has the information in front of them. 

This means that many times prospects will call the listing agent of a property because they will see it on REALTOR.com; because of this, it very important that you have a proactive Real Estate Agent.  If they call your listing agent and they cannot convert the sale then the sale is lost. 

The internet is also a great tool to determine activity you are receiving on your home via the number of internet hits and showings you receive on your property.

It has been our experience if you are getting a lot of internet hits but no showings then your property is probably priced anywhere from 6%-12% over value.  If you are getting a lot of showings but no 2nd showings, your property is probably priced somewhere between 4%-6% over market.  If you are getting a lot of 2nd and 3rd showings then your property is probably competitively priced and will sell soon.  Very few people look at a home only once and purchase.  Below you will see a diagram that shows this theory.

A client once told me, “my house must not be overpriced – nobody has complained about the price and nobody has looked at it”.  If no one is looking at your property, that means the public has gone online and made a decision – right or wrong – that the house is overpriced and are not even asking agents to look at your property.