Serving the First Time Home Buyer with Your Real Estate Website

Honing pages in your real estate web site for the first time home buyer market niche can be an important niche real estate market – they make up almost 40% of it. Regionally, this percentage swings from 36% in the West and South real estate markets to 43% in the northeastern US, according to the National Association of Realtors® 2007 survey.

Why is the first time home buyer market an important target market for real estate agents? With little to no experience buying a house, novice home buyers depend on a real estate agent to help them both with the buying process itself as well as narrowing the search for that perfect single family, detached home.

Positioning your real estate website to attract the new home buyers means knowing almost half are married couples, usually moving out a rental situation into a home in the suburbs. The average first time home buyer is 31 years old looking for a house in the suburbs, generally in the 1500 square feet and $165,000 range. Single men and women, with each making up almost 25% of the first time buyer market, are also looking for help, and usually looking for smaller homes.

While the first time buyers’ income and target home price is lower than repeat buyers, their buying experience can be a greater leverage point to referrals. Given that first time home buyers are usually relying on their real estate agent to not only get educated on the necessary real estate transaction steps and paperwork, but also how to see the features and faults of properties. Your personal interaction is the primary way they learn, but readily available information on your real estate web site allows them to gather more information from you on their own time.

Referrals account for a large percentage of how buyers connect with their real estate agents, but with a greater affinity for the Internet, these 30-somethings do most of their research at real estate web sites. Given America’s moving habits, your client will probably move 3 to 4 more times in the next 15 years and usually within the same city, so having memorable real estate website remains a great future contact point.

Another reason to keep in contact with them after the sale, especially in the Western part of the US, is they become the real estate market looking for vacation or second home property! Interestingly, from 2005 to 2006, the average age of second home buyers dropped from 52 years old to 44 years old. With the popularity of books and seminars, such as the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series, more people are looking to real estate to provide better security for their wealth.

A common thread motivating first time buyers and vacation home buyers is this preservation of wealth. For first time buyers, they are looking to turn their monthly payments from rent to equity in their own home. For second home purchasers, in 2006, 43 were looking to diversify investments and additional 15% were looking for a place to park their extra money.

Knowing what the first time home buyers are looking for (both a house and an opportunity to build equity), what problems they run into – such as making sure their credit rating is up to par, and where their real estate market is, helps you know where to add content to your real estate web site. Buyers guides, FAQ pages for first time buyers and self help guides to improving credit ratings are both opportunities to educate and use keywords to attract the search engines and this niche market.

Defining and targeting a real estate market niche, marketing to that niche and analyzing your feedback to improve your niche marketing are all necessary steps to your real estate website success.