Marktdominanz von Maklern auf Onlineimmobilienportalen in Deutschland und Kalifornien

The market share of brokers as an important parameter regarding the sales process in the residential real estate market has been an intensively discussed topic in Germany, on which surprisingly little reliable information is available. Since this information shortage also occurs in other aspects of real estate markets, data from online real estate platforms, as the most widespread marketing option, have been increasingly analyzed. This study complements these efforts to increase transparency with a comparative analysis of the market share of brokers in the German and US (California submarket) online real estate market. For this purpose, listing data from market-leading real estate platforms in Germany and the US were evaluated. The statistical analysis of the 69,711 listings includes both an aggregated comparison of the market share of brokers between Germany and California, as well as a detailed investigation of differences of the chance of broker involvement between different market segments using a logistic regression. The key finding is that the broker market share on real estate platforms of 98% in California is significantly higher than the rate of approximately 88% in Germany. This result confirms the research question derived from the literature analysis that real estate transactions differ in the examined countries and that brokers are used more frequently in California. In detail, it turns out that in both countries characteristics such as building type and quality have an influence on the chance of marketing with or without an agent. Comparing the two countries, these effects are partly the same and partly of an opposite nature.