The busy folks at the NAR’s Center for Realtor® Technnology (CRT) have released the 2009 Realtor® Technology Report.

The report details the results of a technology survey that was sent to 47,000 Realtors® by email and was posted on the National Association of Realtors® site and various social networking sites. In all, 1,189 completed surveys were sent to the CRT.

You can download your very own copy of the report by clicking here. Get a cup of coffee (or two) before you read it because it covers a lot of ground.

Rather than go through the entire survey, we’ll just use that big old “broad brush” approach and hit a few of highlights.

Of particular interest is what the respondents had to say about lead generations. Out of the members surveyed, 83 percent said referrals and 82 percent said repeat business are very important in generating leads. Additionally, 53 percent said the Internet is very important to generating leads.

Furthermore, 28 percent of the respondents said they were comfortable with social media tools while 27 percent said they are somewhat comfortable. Also, 76 percent said the use Facebook while 58 percent used LinkedIn. Of all of them, 16 percent said they don’t use any social media sites at all while 25 percent say social networking is effective for business purposes.

Of the respondents, 83 percent said their listings are displayed on Realtor.com, 83 percent said listings are displayed on a broker’s or office’s site and 73 percent are displayed on a local board or MLS site.

Again, the survey results are displayed a length in the aforementioned report. What we’re excited about here at the Arkansas Realtors® Association (ARA) is that we’ve put together a survey of our own and have distributed it to local boards to be sent to their members.

Within a week or so, then, we should have a pretty good handle on whether Arkansas Realtors® use social networking sites, run blogs and/or Internet sites, whether they believe this little blog is a useful resource, whether the Internet is important for lead generation and marketing and whether people turn to the Internet or traditional media outlets for their news.

Once we get enough responses to get a handle on how our members utilize technology, we’ll post the results here. So, stay tuned…