The NAR collected data from their Home Buyers and Sellers Surveys for the period 2004-2013 to document trends in the home search process.
Based on the collected data, using the Web to hunt for homes has increased by 28 percent since 2004. In 2013 alone, 48 percent of first-time home buyers and 40 percent of repeat home buyers used the internet in their home search process. Finding homes through agents has decreased for repeat home buyers, but there has been a slight increase in this method for first-time buyers since 2011.