How Does Online Information Influence Offline Transactions? Insights from Digital Real Estate Platforms.

This article examines the impact of online property information provided by digital real estate platforms, particularly Zillow, on offline residential property sale prices. The study finds that online information related to experience attributes—such as the length of textual property descriptions and the number of photos—significantly increases sale prices, especially for uncommon properties whose values deviate substantially from neighborhood averages. In contrast, information on search attributes, like factual property details, does not significantly affect sale prices. These findings are robust across different model specifications, geographic regions, and time periods, and remain valid after controlling for real estate agents’ service quality and unobserved property heterogeneities. The results suggest that sellers and agents should emphasize experiential information online, and that digital platforms can enhance their design by focusing on experience-related content to better facilitate property transactions.