Recently the Illinois Association of REALTORS® Advocacy Program introduced to its members a new, one-of-a-kind, interactive website www.WhyIBuy.org.

The site aims to help you understand the motivations and opinions of Illinois homebuyers based on telephone interviews with those who purchased a home in the last 12 months. Because the project is ongoing—recent homeowners are being surveyed every quarter—this will be a continually growing source of information for Illinois REALTORS®.

Survey questions regard the use of a REALTOR® and other resources used by the homebuyers in their home searches as well as other facts about the buyers: income, age, number of children in the household, number of homes previously owned.

Here are some of the research areas examined:

• What are homebuyers finding most helpful in their home searches?
• How are homebuyers choosing a REALTOR®?
• How are homebuyers using TV, radio and other media

The site presents this information on a statewide level. Regional reports will be shown on the site later. Also to be included later will be quarterly reports on the trends along with analysis of the homebuyer statistics in Illinois. Large regions (Northern, Southern, and Central Illinois) are reviewed quarterly and their sub-regions are reviewed yearly.

Here are some interesting findings from buyers from data through December 2010:

• The percentage of first-time homebuyers took a big drop in June (with the expiration of the federal tax credit) but by year-end first-time buyers were still approximately 20% of all buyers in Illinois.
• 50% of buyers had no children.
• Homebuyers were evenly split on citing the most helpful resource: working with a REALTOR® and using the Internet.