2005 NAR report

The NAR released on January 17 their 2005 National Association of Realtors® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers based on the results from 7,800 responses to a questionnaire. The highlights:

- 9 out of 10 homebuyers use a real estate agent in the search process
- 24 percent of buyers first identified their homes on the Internet
- 81 percent of Internet home buyers use a real estate agent to purchase their home whereas only 63 percent of non-Internet buyers use an agent
- 13 percent of sellers conducted their transactions without the use of a real estate agent

Read more details about this survey at http://www.realtor.org/publicaffairsweb.nsf/pages/hmbuyersellersurvey06

How quickly do visitors judge a website?

There is a report published by www.nature.com stating that website visitors "judge" a website in just 1/20th of a second. The study clearly shows that the brain can make flash judgements almost as fast as the eye can take in the information. This judgement includes a quick decision on the quality of a website.

WebCubic has always said the a website's image is important. This study explains why.

Read the article at http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060109/full/060109-13.html

Los Angeles predicted to fizzle

At CNNMoney.com (http://money.cnn.com) economists at Fiserv Case Shiller Weiss predict that Los Angeles will fizzle. Fiserv CSW has been predicting home price growth with remarkable accuracy over the last decade.

Fiserv CSW is predicting that greater Los Angeles prices will rise by only 5.8 percent in 2006.