Real Estate Search Demographics

If you haven’t seen it, Microsoft released a demographic tool that gives the estimated demographic for a search term and/or URL. Just for fun I threw a few of the major real estate technology sites (as well as the search term [real estate], kept track of the results, and that pushed this chart out of Excel:

[photopress:real_estate_search_demographics.gif,full,centered]

So, assuming that Microsoft’s numbers are correct, what patterns emerge?

  • The search term [real estate] tracked really low for people under 18 and high for people between 25 and 34 (kinda makes sense!), but none of the websites tracked near these extremes.
  • HomeValues and HouseGain… I mean HouseValues and HomeGain attract nearly identical audiences.
  • Trulia and Zillow attracted almost identical audiences as well (never off my more than 2% for any demographic)
  • Zillow had the most balanced demographic pattern with between 18% and 22% in each category.

Note the obvious: Microsoft only has demographic information on people who give it this information. This means that the data is just as suspect as the Alexa data.