When Do You Know You've Found "The One"? About 20 Minutes After You've Checked it Out on MLS

Interesting study by the Institute for Behavioral and Experimental Real Estate at Old Dominion University at Norfolk, Va. (what a mouthful!). Researchers found that it takes just 20 seconds for shoppers to decide on whether or not to pursue a home just from the information presented on the very front page of the listing. From there, study subjects were found to glance at just about everything else on the screen other than the listing.

“Without an eye-catching photo, the battle is lost before it begins,” Prof. Seiler says. “You have to grab people’s attention within two seconds. Do it the way a billboard does.”

So how do you catch a potential buyer’s attention? Professional photography. No joke, y’all, if you’re not hiring a professional photographer to make your listings look like a million bucks regardless of the price range, then you’re missing out on a sale. And while I find the agent notes to be helpful for me, they were widely disregarded by study subjects — especially if they were over-hyped with all-caps and poor grammar — with more than 41 percent skipping over them entirely.

Read the whole story — including the helpful infographics — on the Wall Street Journal website.