NEW! The second CREST survey is in the field!

The Center for Real Estate and Social Technologies (CREST) is the definitive research and education resource for social technologies in the real estate business, conducting surveys and other projects to generate benchmarks and best practices that REALTORS® can employ to improve their social networking, blogging, and social media marketing efforts.

Abbreviated results of our first survey (purchase the full results for just $9):

INTRODUCTION

More and more, blogging and real estate are going hand in hand. To see how REALTORS®, brokers, and other professionals who write about the real estate business use their blogs, the Center for Real Estate & Social Media (CREST) conducted an unprecedented research project on the state of blogging in real estate.  This initial survey is an overview of blogging in the industry. Over the course of 24 days, CREST collected 128 responses from around the country through a questionnaire at VARbuzz.com.

RESPONDENT PROFILE

Blogger profession:

• Real estate agent: 65.6%
• Real estate broker: 22.7%
• Other profession: 11.7%

Blogging platform:

• WordPress: 49.2%
• ActiveRain: 24.2%
• Blogger: 8.6%
• Movable Type/TypePad: 7%
• RealTown: .8%
• Other: 10.2

Hosting arrangement:

• Self-hosted: 47.7%
• Hosted: 46.9%
• Don’t Know: 5.5%

Comments allowed:

• Yes: 97.7%
• No: 2.3%

Full text RSS feed offered:

• Yes: 72.7%
• No: 27.3%

Partial text RSS feed offered:

• Yes: 19.5%
• No: 80.5%

Full text e-mail feed offered:

• Yes: 41.4%
• No: 58.6%

Partial text e-mail feed offered:

• Yes: 12.5%
• No: 87.5%

Summary of Major Findings

The median start date of a real estate blog is August 1, 2007.

• 59% of Wordpress users started their blogs before the median start date.
• 45% of Blogger users started blogging before the median start date.
• 42% of ActiveRain blogs were started before the median start date.
• 67% of Moveable Type/TypePad blogs were started before the median start date.
• 69% of bloggers using any other platform started blogging before the median start date.
• 82% of real estate blogs started in or before 2005 are running Wordpress.

Bloggers as a whole made a median of 12 posts to their blogs in May 2008.

• Wordpress users made a median of 10 posts.
• ActiveRain users made a median of 12 posts.
• Blogger users made a median of 4 posts.
• Moveable Type/TypePad users made a median of 8 posts.
• Other blogging platform users made a median of 15 posts.

As a whole, real estate bloggers received a median of 7 total comments in May 2008.

• ActiveRain users received a median of 30 total comments.
• Blogger users received a median of 1 total comment.
• Moveable Type/TypePad users received a median of 1 total comment.
• Other platform users received a median of 4 total comments.
• Wordpress users received a median of 8 total comments.

Removing ActiveRain from the mix, the average number of comments per post was 1.85.*

The average number of comments per post for all respondents was 3.42. The older the blog, the higher the average comments per post.

• Blogs started in 2005 received an average of 7.3 comments per post in May 2008.
• Blogs started in 2006 received an average of 4.1 comments per post in May 2008.
• Blogs started in 2007 received an average of 3.5 comments per post in May 2008.
• Blogs started in 2008 received an average of 1.3 comments per post in May 2008.

79% of respondents reported receiving fewer than 50 total comments in May 2008.

Danilo Bogdanovic, Advisor
Jovan Hackley, Statistician
Andrew Kantor, Editor
Candy Lynn, Advisor
Ben Martin, Author
Scott Rogers, Advisor
Daniel Rothamel, Advisor
Jay Thompson, Advisor