Real estate agencies with snazzy homepages are seeing their market shrink for the first time, for two years in a row.
In fact, according to Pew Research the share of homes using broadband service continues to shrink, with nearly half non-broadband subscribers likely to get their home connected.
And more importantly, this trend is across the board: Millennials, Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers.
This report goes deeper, still here’s a key snippet:
“This downtick in home high-speed adoption has taken place at the same time there has been an increase in “smartphone-only” adults – those who own a smartphone that they can use to access the internet, but do not have traditional broadband service at home. Today smartphone adoption has reached parity with home broadband adoption (68% of Americans now report that they own a smartphone), and 13% of Americans are “smartphone-only” – up from 8% in 2013. Some of the most significant changes in these adoption patterns are taking place among African Americans, those with relatively low household incomes and those living in rural areas.”
So for all those real estate and loan brokerages who think just having a great website works, and don’t take the mobile aspect into question, will see fewer users in the future.
Home searching is moving more and more to smartphones, whether we accept it or not.
It’s only a matter of time before qualifying and locking a mortgage follows in those footsteps.
