The Internet has revolutionized the way people approach how they buy and sell real estate. In fact, according to the National Association of Realtors, over 80 percent of all buyers use the Internet as their first resource in searching for a home . And, over 30 percent of all houses purchased were first seen on the Internet. Among the many reasons for this trend include the fact that there is so much great information available on the web, there are a gazillions websites listing houses for sale and also the aging of the Generation X’ers, to the point where they are becoming home buyers (the Gen X’ers are very Internet savvy and prefer to do their research online).

I really became interested in buying and selling houses online in the summer of 2005 when I had a few investment properties to sell. The traditional means of hiring a real estate agent to list, then sell the homes really didn’t appeal to me for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t want to pay a sales commission as it would cut into my profit margins. Two, I’m kind of a do it yourself person that always has to try something first. So I looked for ways to sell houses using the Internet.

My search for ways to sell homes on the Internet soon took me to ebay real estate auction. After all, You can sell almost anything on eBay! eBay is the world’s leading marketplace for online goods and services so I was really curious as to how their real estate business was doing, especially considering what they had been able to accomplish in other areas. A person only has to look at one example of what eBay has done to revolutionize buying and selling. In the past few years have you ever looked at eBay to buy a car? If you had, you would have seen that in the year 2000 eBay had a small auto marketplace. Now fast forward to today and eBay Motors dominates the used car marketplace and is the country’s biggest car dealer! Hmmm…now take the above fact and do you think perhaps eBay Real Estate is similar today to where eBay Motors was in 2000? Was eBay poised to accomplish that same feat in Real Estate?

It seemed at the time that selling homes on eBay was really catching on and that it was where the action was in real estate. In mid 2006, eBay seemed like it was going to be a real leader for providing home sellers, investors and real estate agents an inexpensive and effective venue for buying and selling home, commercial properties, timeshares, land, and even mobile homes. The mid 2006 eBay real estate listings were as follows:

- Approximately 4650 Properties were Selling on eBay every month

- Average Listings on any Given Day included:

– 1300 Residential homes
– 350 Commercial
– 100 Mobile Homes
– 1100 Timeshares
– 1500 Land Parcels

Given the above numbers it seemed like there was a good base of homes being sold on eBay as well as timeshares and land.

So I plowed ahead and tried selling houses on eBay – two in Las Vegas, two in Washington and a couple of preconstruction homes in Destin FL. I met with mixed success, but more on these deals in a later article.

Now it is early 2009 and I wanted to check back in to see if the real estate business on eBay had picked up any in the two plus years since I had last checked their stats. Here is what I found:

– 520 Residential homes
– 140 Commercial
– 65 Mobile Homes
– 1277 Timeshares
– 1006 Land Parcels
– 68 Other

The fact that the number of property listings, auctions and classified ads on eBay had declined really surprised. The number of timeshares for sale on eBay had certainly increased, but everything else went down. Why? Initially, I can only think of two reasons why eBay’s real estate business is down. One – the housing market is so bad right now that no one is trying to sell because of the belief there are no buyers. Two – eBay real estate really has not caught on as a place to buy and sell real estate. There can be many reasons contributing to issue number two such as competition for Craigslist (which is free), sellers have had poor success in the past trying to use eBay real estate and maybe all the bad press about online real estate scams have people scared off.

I am curious as to why eBay’s real estate business is down in numbers and I am curious as to what eBay will have to do to gain momentum in this market niche. Do you think sell house online will grow and prosper? Do you think it has a chance against all the other Internet competition?

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