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Experienced Real Estate Agents Spend More on Listings

Real estate agents who have 5+ years of experience represent higher-priced listings and spend more marketing those properties - $864 per listing - according to a VHT survey of agents’ and brokers’ allocation of marketing dollars for print, TV, direct mail and online.

Respondents with less than five years experience spent, on average, $675 per listing, the survey found. Some 1,300 real estate professionals were surveyed.

“[T]he longer an agent is in the business the more likely they are to represent more properties, have higher-priced listings and spend more on interactive media,” said VHT, Inc. CEO Brian Balduf.

Agents with 2-5 years’ experience had listings in the $490K range, whereas those with 10+ years had average listings of $600K in value:

In general, however, agents are confused about the myriad choices in which to invest their marketing dollars, online and offline, both traditional and nontraditional media; in addition, they are not able to find much information before or after their media purchase to provide a benchmark, the study found.

The biggest challenges facing real estate are tracking results, managing multiple input forms, and retyping listing information for a variety of media services, according to the study.

Summary of survey results:

• In the past year, 30% of agents managed 5-10 listings; 34.8% managed 10-20 listings; and 20.6% managed 20 or more listings.
• The average listing price for 59% of the agents was between $250-500K. Some 23.2% had listings in the $500K-$1MM+ range; 8.9% had listings worth less than $250K; and 8.9% had average listings worth more than $1MM.
• There was a direct correlation between the amount an agent spent to market a property and the value of the property. For listings in the $250-500K range, agents spent on average $682/listing. Agents with properties in the $1MM-2.5MM range spent on average $1,742/listing.

• 24.5% of agents/brokers spent an average of $250-$500 to market their listing; 20.6% spent $500-$1,000; 25.2% spent more than $1,000; and 18.8% said “it depended the listing.”
• 90% of respondents said they used brochures for marketing their listing; 88.8% used postcards; and 83.3% used newspapers. Some 41.1% stated that they purchased TV ads.

• Though respondents indicated a significant portion of their listing budget was spent on newspapers, only 20.4% said they think this medium is “effective.” Some 49% said online ads were “very effective.”
• Agents said online ads and signage are “more valuable” for promoting a property. But when asked what their sellers felt was important, 92.4% said sellers mentioned newspaper ads.
• Realtor.com, Craigslist and Google were the top national websites used by agents.
• When asked how their media buying process could be improved, 27% said they needed an “easier” process; 16% replied that they wanted “more statistics”; and 18% stated that they need a one-stop distribution mechanism.

About the data: Respondents were evenly distributed in terms of real estate experience: 34% had 2-5 years of experience; 23.8% had 5-10 years of experience; and 38.6% had 10+ years of experience.