U.S. realtors increased since IT adopted

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Jan. 13 (UPI) -- It was once thought that information technologies would reduce the number of U.S. realtors but researchers have found the opposite to be true.

In the residential real estate industry, expanded access to information hasn't rendered the real estate agent a relic, says Pennsylvania State University researcher Steve Sawyer.

"The expectation was that real estate agents would go away once consumers could see all the home listing information, but the number of real estate agents has increased, not decreased, in the last 10 years," says Sawyer.

The amount of relevant information about real estate has exploded, requiring more people and more specialized professionals to be involved in supporting, understanding and processing that information, according to Sawyer, Wolf T. Wigand, at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Ark.; and Kevin Crowston of Syracuse University in New York.

However, the transparency of information and data available to consumers has reduced real estate agent commissions, the researchers said.

The findings are published in the Journal of Information Technology.