• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, May 19, 2005

Online ad spending related to real estate will surge to an estimated $1.8 billion this year--a 55 percent increase from last year's $1.16 billion, according to a forecast released Wednesday by Borrell Associates.

The report also predicts that total ad spending on real estate will increase to just $11.3 billion this year, from $11.2 billion in 2004--which means that the online share of real estate ads will grow to 15.9 percent this year, from 10.3 percent last year.

"The sudden growth indicates that agents, brokers, and developers have moved from the experimentation phase, and are beginning to commit sizable portions of their marketing budgets to online media," wrote Borrell Associates in a memo summarizing its research.

Borrell predicted that online media will continue to grow its share of realty-related ad dollars--and that by 2009, more ad dollars related to real estate will be spent online than in newspapers.

Borrell also reported that brokerage firms and agents advertise heavily on search engines, and that the high-end of prices is around $2 a click. The company said that Yahoo! Search data on Tuesday showed that in some markets, agents pay even more--from around $3 in Portland and North Virginia to more than $6 in San Diego and Palm Springs.