Real Estate Marketing Statistics: How Buyers, Sellers, and Agents Use Digital in 2026

This research asset compiles verified real estate marketing statistics on how buyers and sellers search, where transactions actually start, how agents market listings and generate leads, and what listing media does to engagement. Every number below is attributed to a named publisher and year, drawn primarily from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), with supporting data from Zillow and Statista. Where a figure comes from a self-reported survey, that limitation is flagged so the number is used correctly.

Key definitions. “Started search online” means the buyer’s first reported action was looking at properties on the internet. “Found home online” means the online listing or portal was the source through which the buyer first learned of the home they bought. These are distinct measures and are reported separately below.

Executive Summary

• 43% of U.S. buyers said their first step in the home-buying process was looking for properties online, versus 21% who first contacted a real estate agent (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 51% of U.S. buyers found the home they purchased through an online search, ahead of 29% who found it through an agent and 8% through a friend, relative, or neighbor (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 88% of U.S. buyers purchased through a real estate agent or broker, and 90% of sellers sold with an agent, while for-sale-by-owner fell to an all-time low of 6% (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• Among website features, 41% of U.S. buyers found listing photos very useful, 39% detailed property information, and 31% floor plans (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 54% of Realtors said social media generated their highest number of quality leads, more than any other technology tool, with 92% using Facebook and 68% Instagram (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors).
• Zillow listings with an interactive floor plan received on average 60% more views, 79% more saves, and 72% more shares than listings without one (Source: Zillow, data Oct 2022 to Mar 2023, top 50 MSAs).
• The U.S. real estate agents and managers industry spent about $537.5 million on advertising in 2023, down from $764.7 million a year earlier (Source: Schonfeld & Associates, via Statista, July 2024).

Key Findings

• 43% of U.S. buyers began the process by looking at properties online in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 51% of U.S. buyers found the home they bought through an online search in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 86% of U.S. buyers used a real estate agent as an information source during the search in 2024, the most-used source of all (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 69% of U.S. buyers used a mobile or tablet device during their home search in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• Buyers viewed a median of seven homes in 2024, two of which were viewed online only (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 88% of U.S. home purchases were made through an agent or broker in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 90% of U.S. sellers sold with an agent and only 6% were FSBO in 2024, an all-time low for FSBO (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• Selling agents listed homes on the MLS 86% of the time, posted yard signs 61%, and hosted open houses 58% in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• 54% of Realtors said social media produced their highest number of quality leads in the 2023 Technology Survey, ahead of CRM at 36% and the local MLS at 24% (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors).
• 92% of Realtors used Facebook, 68% Instagram, 52% LinkedIn, and 26% YouTube for their business (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors).
• 79% of Realtors used eSignature, 75% used social media, 52% used drone photography or video, and 46% used AI-generated content (Source: NAR, 2025 Technology Survey).
• Zillow Showcase listings earned 75% more page views, 68% more saves, and 75% more shares than comparable traditional listings (Source: Zillow Group, April 2024).
• Homes listed with Zillow Showcase sold for about 2% more, a bonus of more than $9,000, and were 20% more likely to get an accepted offer within 14 days (Source: Zillow Group, April 2024).
• 40% of U.S. buyers found their agent through a friend, neighbor, or relative referral in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).
• The median age of all U.S. buyers reached 56 and first-time buyers 38 in 2024, both record highs, while first-time buyers fell to 24% of the market (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).

How Buyers Search: Where the Process Starts

The search starts on a screen, but it does not end there. NAR’s survey separates the buyer’s first action from the source of the home they eventually bought, and both point to digital dominance at the top of the funnel with agents closing the deal.

43% of buyers said their first step was looking for properties online, compared with 21% who first contacted an agent in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). 51% of buyers found the home they purchased through an online search, versus 29% through an agent and 8% through a friend, relative, or neighbor in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). 69% of buyers used a mobile or tablet device in their search, and buyers viewed a median of seven homes, two of them online only, in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). The practical meaning: portals and mobile listings win first attention, but 86% of buyers still rated the agent as their most useful information source in 2024, so digital discovery and human guidance are complements, not substitutes (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). Limitation: these are self-reported recollections from buyers who purchased in the survey window, so the “first step” measure reflects memory, not tracked behavior.

Listing Media: Photos, Floor Plans, and Video

When buyers describe what makes a listing useful, visual and structured detail lead. Media also has a measurable effect on how listings perform on portals.

41% of buyers found listing photos very useful, 39% valued detailed property information, and 31% appreciated floor plans in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). On Zillow, listings with an interactive floor plan received on average 60% more views, 79% more saves, and 72% more shares than listings without one, based on data from October 2022 to March 2023 across the top 50 metro statistical areas (Source: Zillow). Zillow Showcase listings, which bundle richer media, earned 75% more page views, 68% more saves, and 75% more shares than comparable traditional listings, and sold for about 2% more, roughly $9,000, while being 20% more likely to secure an accepted offer within 14 days (Source: Zillow Group, April 2024). Context: the Zillow engagement lifts are correlational and reflect listings that opted into premium media, so agent quality and property mix likely contribute; treat them as engagement associations, not guaranteed causal price effects.

Agent Digital and Social Marketing

Agents concentrate marketing effort where leads convert. Social media is the most-cited lead engine, and platform usage is heavily weighted toward Facebook and Instagram.

54% of Realtors said social media gave them the highest number of quality leads over the prior 12 months, ahead of CRM systems at 36% and the local MLS at 24% (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors). 92% of Realtors used Facebook, 68% Instagram, 52% LinkedIn, and 26% YouTube for their business (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors). By 2025, eSignature remained the most-used tool at 79%, social media was used by 75% of Realtors, drone photography or video by 52%, and AI-generated content by 46% (Source: NAR, 2025 Technology Survey). At the industry level, U.S. real estate agents and managers spent about $537.5 million on advertising in 2023, down sharply from $764.7 million the prior year (Source: Schonfeld & Associates, via Statista, July 2024). What it means: organic social reach, not paid advertising, is where individual agents report the strongest lead quality, which aligns with falling industry ad spend. Limitation: the lead-quality figures are self-reported perceptions from NAR members, not audited conversion data, and the two Technology Survey waves cited here (2023 and 2025) are different vintages, so platform-level numbers should not be mixed across years.

How Listings Get Marketed and How Sellers Choose Agents

Sellers rely on agents, and agents lean on a predictable stack of listing channels led by the MLS.

Selling agents listed homes on the MLS 86% of the time, posted yard signs 61%, hosted open houses 58%, listed on Realtor.com 49%, on third-party aggregators 47%, on their own website 46%, and on their company website 39% in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). 90% of sellers sold with an agent’s assistance and FSBO fell to 6%, an all-time low, in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). 66% of sellers used an agent they were referred to or had worked with before, and 81% contacted only one agent before listing in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). Among FSBO sellers, 63% did not actively market the home at all in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). The takeaway: the MLS remains the marketing backbone, and seller loyalty plus low FSBO share mean referral reputation is a marketing channel in its own right.

Lead Sources and Referral Reputation

Referrals dominate how buyers and sellers find agents, which reframes “marketing” as reputation management as much as advertising.

40% of all buyers found their agent through a friend, neighbor, or relative in 2024, rising to 51% among first-time buyers (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). 88% of buyers said they would use their agent again or recommend the agent, and 61% had already recommended the agent within the year of purchase (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). For agents, 54% named social media as their top quality-lead source in the 2023 Technology Survey (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors). Read together, these figures show two lead systems running in parallel: a referral engine fed by past-client satisfaction, and a digital engine led by organic social content.

Original Synthesis

The three insights below combine the verified public figures above. Each states its formula, inputs, and limitations, and none should be read as precise causal estimates.

1. The “discovery-to-close” gap

Logic: subtract the share of buyers who start online from the share who close through an agent to size the handoff from digital discovery to human transaction. Inputs: 43% start their search online and 88% close through an agent (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers). The 45-point gap shows that digital marketing overwhelmingly wins first contact while the transaction still runs through an agent. Limitation: the two percentages measure different stages of one journey, so the subtraction is a directional framing, not a conversion rate.

2. Platform-usage vs. lead-quality mismatch

Logic: compare how widely a platform is used against how often it is credited for the best leads. Inputs: 92% of Realtors use Facebook, yet social media as a category, not any single platform, is the top quality-lead source at 54% (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors). Near-universal Facebook adoption does not by itself guarantee lead quality; the survey credits the social channel broadly, implying content and consistency matter more than mere presence. Limitation: NAR reports lead quality at the channel level, not per platform, so a Facebook-specific quality rate cannot be derived.

3. Media-engagement multiplier for listings

Logic: average Zillow’s reported view, save, and share lifts to express a single rough “engagement multiplier” for rich media. Inputs: interactive-floor-plan listings saw 60% more views, 79% more saves, and 72% more shares (Source: Zillow, Oct 2022 to Mar 2023). The simple mean of those three lifts is about 70% more engagement across the measured metrics. Limitation: this is an unweighted average of three correlated metrics from opt-in listings, so it describes association, not a controlled causal effect, and should not be presented as a price or speed guarantee.

Data Tables

Source for all rows: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, as reported by Florida Realtors.

Source: Zillow and Zillow Group. Figures are correlational and based on opt-in listings.

Charts to Build

• Search start vs. close channel. Data: 43% start online, 21% start with an agent, 88% close with an agent (NAR, 2024). Insight: digital wins discovery; agents win the close. Citation-worthy because it visualizes the funnel handoff in one frame.
• Website feature usefulness bar chart. Data: photos 41%, detailed info 39%, floor plans 31% (NAR, 2024). Insight: visuals and structured data beat everything else. Citation-worthy as a quick listing-media priority guide.
• Agent platform usage vs. lead quality. Data: Facebook 92% usage but social credited by 54% for best leads (NAR, 2023). Insight: adoption does not equal effectiveness. Citation-worthy for marketers debating channel ROI.
• Listing-media engagement lift. Data: interactive floor plan +60% views, +79% saves, +72% shares (Zillow). Insight: rich media strongly correlates with engagement. Citation-worthy for justifying media budgets.
• Industry ad spend trend. Data: $764.7M (2022) to $537.5M (2023) for agents and managers (Statista). Insight: paid ad spend is contracting as organic social leads. Citation-worthy for a macro marketing-budget story.

Inline chart, buyer discovery vs. close (U.S., 2024, NAR):

Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

Methodology

Sources were selected by priority: NAR primary reports first, then Zillow first-party listing data, then Statista-hosted third-party market data. The NAR 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers figures were read directly from the official NAR highlights PDF to avoid secondary paraphrase. Where the NAR Technology Survey was involved, the 2023 platform-level breakdown was taken from Florida Realtors, a NAR state association reporting NAR’s own survey, and the 2025 top-line adoption figures from NAR’s own newsroom; the two survey years are labeled separately and never blended. Conflicting figures were resolved by preferring the most direct primary source and the stated survey window. No numbers were estimated or invented; any figure that could not be traced to a named publisher was excluded. Derived insights in Original Synthesis use only the figures cited here and state their formulas and limitations. Last updated July 2026.

Source Quality

Tier 1 (primary industry body and first-party platform data): NAR 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers; NAR 2025 Technology Survey; NAR 2023 Technology Survey; Zillow and Zillow Group first-party listing data. Tier 2 (credible market research and state association reporting): Schonfeld & Associates advertising-spend data hosted by Statista; Florida Realtors reporting of the NAR 2023 Technology Survey. Tier 3: none relied upon for any statistic in this asset.

Most Quotable Statistics

• 51% of U.S. buyers found the home they bought through an online search in 2024 (NAR).
• 90% of sellers used an agent and FSBO fell to an all-time low of 6% in 2024 (NAR).
• 92% of Realtors use Facebook, and social media is their top quality-lead source at 54% (NAR, 2023).
• Zillow listings with an interactive floor plan get 79% more saves than those without (Zillow).

Data Limitations

NAR’s Profile and Technology Surveys are self-reported member and consumer surveys, so recollection bias affects “first step” and lead-quality measures. Zillow’s engagement lifts are correlational and based on opt-in listings, so they cannot be read as guaranteed causal price or speed effects. The NAR Technology Survey figures cited come from two different waves (2023 and 2025) and should not be mixed. The Statista ad-spend series covers the agents and managers category only and is a third-party estimate. All figures are U.S.-only and may not generalize to other markets.

Recommended Dataset Fields

For a downloadable CSV, include: statistic_name; value; unit (percent or USD); geography (U.S.); year; segment (buyer, seller, agent, listing); publisher; report_name; source_url; measurement_type (survey, platform data, market estimate); limitation_note.

Press Summary

Real estate marketing in the United States now runs on a split funnel: buyers discover homes digitally and close with agents. In 2024, 43% of buyers began their search online and 51% found the home they bought through an online search, yet 88% still purchased through an agent, according to the National Association of Realtors. Listing media matters measurably. Photos, detailed information, and floor plans top what buyers call useful, and Zillow reports that listings with an interactive floor plan see 60% more views and 79% more saves. On the agent side, social media is the leading quality-lead source at 54%, with 92% of Realtors on Facebook, per NAR’s Technology Survey. Meanwhile industry advertising spend for agents and managers fell to about $537.5 million in 2023 from $764.7 million, per Statista, signaling a shift from paid advertising toward organic social and referral marketing. See full sources and tables in the research asset.

Suggested Headlines

• 51% of Home Buyers Now Find Their Home Online, but 88% Still Close With an Agent
• The Real Estate Marketing Funnel in 2026: Digital Discovery, Human Close
• Why 92% of Realtors Are on Facebook, and What Actually Drives Their Best Leads
• Listing Media Pays: Zillow Floor Plans Linked to 79% More Saves
• Real Estate Ad Spend Is Falling as Agents Shift to Organic Social

FAQ

What share of home buyers start their search online?

43% of U.S. buyers said their first step was looking for properties online in 2024, versus 21% who first contacted an agent (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).

How many buyers find their home through an online search?

51% found the home they purchased through an online search in 2024, ahead of 29% via an agent (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).

Do most buyers still use an agent?

Yes. 88% of U.S. buyers purchased through an agent or broker in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).

What listing features do buyers value most?

41% found photos very useful, 39% detailed property information, and 31% floor plans in 2024 (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).

Does adding a floor plan or 3D tour help a listing?

Zillow listings with an interactive floor plan received 60% more views, 79% more saves, and 72% more shares on average between October 2022 and March 2023, a correlational result (Source: Zillow).

Do richer media listings sell for more?

Zillow Showcase listings sold for about 2% more, roughly $9,000, and were 20% more likely to get an accepted offer within 14 days, per Zillow Group in April 2024, though this is correlational (Source: Zillow Group).

Which social platform do agents use most?

92% of Realtors used Facebook, followed by Instagram at 68%, in the 2023 Technology Survey (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors).

What technology gives agents their best leads?

54% of Realtors said social media produced their highest number of quality leads, ahead of CRM at 36% (Source: NAR, 2023 Technology Survey, via Florida Realtors).

How do sellers market homes?

Selling agents listed on the MLS 86% of the time, posted yard signs 61%, and hosted open houses 58% in 2024, and 90% of sellers used an agent (Source: NAR, 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers).

How much does the real estate industry spend on advertising?

The U.S. real estate agents and managers industry spent about $537.5 million on advertising in 2023, down from $764.7 million a year earlier (Source: Schonfeld & Associates, via Statista, July 2024).

About This Research

This asset was compiled by CO Consulting, a research-driven growth-consulting firm, using publicly available primary data. If your team needs help turning marketing statistics like these into a channel strategy, you can book a consultation.

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