Smartphone searches lead the way on homebuying hunts

For tech-savvy home buyers, the smartphone is increasingly the tool of choice for perusing listings and conducting research.

More than half of all U.S. sales listing page views in the second quarter of 2013 were on a mobile device, according to a Realtor.com analysis. And of those views, more than twice as many came from iPad and iPhone than Android devices. IPhones top the search numbers as well, logging nearly three times as many as their Android counterparts, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The higher end of the market, however, accounted for a proportionally smaller chunk of mobile searches, with homes priced $1 million and up accounting for less than 6 percent of all searches. Among those mobile searches on the luxury end, high-priced markets such as Long Island and New Jersey’s Bergen and Passaic counties logged significantly more searches via iPad and iPhone than via Android.

“These are the markets where you’re seeing the highest real estate recovery and homes are selling very quickly,” Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com, told the Journal. Buyers in especially expensive markets want to know the details of a property’s status immediately for fear of missing an opportunity, he added, and in those areas a mobile user typically conducts five times as many property inquiries than a web user.

Though the trend may appear to shut out the old-fashioned broker experience, some agents see tech tools available to clients as advantageous, viewing them as a useful communication tool in a fast-moving market. [WSJ] — Julie Strickland