Americans Want Digital Tools to Complement Traditional Home Shopping

• Only a quarter (23%) of respondents to a recent Zillow survey said they would be comfortable buying a home online.
• Younger generations were more likely to be comfortable with the idea: 36% of Gen Z and 39% of Millennials say they would be comfortable doing so, much higher than the 19% of Gen X and 7% of Baby Boomers & Silent Generation members that said the same.

Most people are reluctant to complete the process of renting, buying and/or selling a home entirely online. But large majorities are comfortable using technology and digital tools to help them with at least some parts of the process. 

Only about a quarter (23%) of respondents to a recent Zillow survey said they would be comfortable buying a home online. Younger generations were slightly more likely to say they would be comfortable: 36% of Gen Z and 39% of Millennials say they would be comfortable doing so, much higher than the 19% of Gen X and 7% of Baby Boomers & Silent Generation members that said the same. About one in eight Americans (12%) said they would be very or extremely confident making an offer on a home after viewing a virtual tour, but still not seeing the home in person. 

Those that recently bought a home were more likely than Americans overall to be confident making such a deal online -- about a third (32%) of recent homebuyers said they would be very or extremely confident doing so. Americans in general that are not necessarily in the market or have not been in a long while may not make as much of a distinction as recent buyers between making an offer and finalizing a home purchase, which may explain the split.

But despite apprehension toward buying a home online, large majorities said they would like to use a host of digital tools while home shopping and touring. These tools include: Viewing a digital floor plan (79% of respondents said its a tool they’d like to use); viewing a 3D virtual tour (79%); receiving email notifications from a saved search on a real estate website or app (75%); watching a video tour with an agent (68%); and unlocking a home with their phone and touring it on their own time (68%).

In general, younger Americans were more likely to say they would like to use many of these tools. The generational divide was starkest among those that expressed a desire to unlock a home with their phone and tour it on their own time: 73% of Gen Z, 78% of millennials and 75% of Gen X said they would like to use this tool while home shopping, compared to just 54% of Baby Boomers & Silent Generation.

Methodology

Zillow Group Population Science collected a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 Americans. Fielded between February 11 and February 19, 2021, the survey asked participants questions about their comfort and likelihood to adopt new technologies in home shopping. The survey also  tested participants’ knowledge of credit scores. To achieve national representativeness, quotas for age, education, sex, region, race, income, and marital status limited oversampling of any given demographic group. In addition to quotas, Zillow used statistical raking to weight the sample to the US Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019 sample of adults.