From Idea to Immersion: How Buyer Expectations Have Shifted Over Generations

Buyers once needed only an idea of a home to book a viewing; later they wanted every room and every fact before they went, and now many want a sense of what living there would be like. Each generation added its expectation to the ones before it, so photos and property details still lead for buyers of every age in NAR's surveys, while video has gained the most in ten years.

An Idea of the Home, Then the Viewing

Baby Boomers, born from 1946 to 1964 by the dates the National Association of Realtors (NAR) uses, turned 25 between 1971 and 1989. The marketing of those years had one job, to bring a buyer to the door. In NAR's 1981 National Homebuying Survey, buyers rated newspaper ads the most important source of information after their agent, as Real Estate in a Digital Age (2021) recalls, and in the printed MLS book of the Seattle area most listings had one photo, of the outside. This was the Idea era. The ad gave a sense of the home and a reason to see it, and the rooms were left for the viewing.

Print has nearly gone from the search since. In NAR's 2014 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends report, on homes bought between July 2012 and June 2013, 23% of buyers used print newspaper ads. In the 2025 edition, on purchases from July 2023 to June 2024, 6% did, and 13% of buyers aged 79 and over. The first picture of the home has kept its place, though: 83% of buyers who searched online rated photos very useful in both reports, more than any other feature of the websites they used.

Every Room and Every Fact Before the Door

Gen X, born from 1965 to 1979, turned 25 between 1990 and 2004, as MLS listings went online and digital photos replaced film. Once the house was on a screen, the facts could come before the visit, and that was the Details era: every room photographed, a floor plan, the size and condition of the home. NAR's 2014 figures show it. Detailed information about properties for sale was rated very useful by 79% of the buyers who searched online, second only to photos, and 63% of them went on to walk through a home they had first seen online.

The facts have held their place and gained a plan. In the 2025 report, 79% again called detailed information very useful. Floor plans weren't on NAR's 2014 list of website features at all; in 2025, 57% of buyers rated them very useful. The age group that did so most often was 45 to 59, Gen X's own, at 61%, and even among buyers aged 79 and over it was 51%. A set that skips rooms, or a listing without a plan, leaves the Details era's questions for the viewing.

Immersion and the Life Around the Home

Millennials, born from 1980 to 1998 by NAR's current dates, and Gen Z, born from 1999 to 2011, brought the Story era. They want a sense of moving through the home and of living in it, and they look on their phones: in the 2025 report, 81% of buyers aged 26 to 34 and 82% of those aged 35 to 44 searched on a mobile or tablet, against 53% of buyers aged 70 to 78.

Video has moved furthest. In the 2014 report, 19% of buyers who searched online rated videos very useful, and 18% of those aged 33 and under. In 2025 the share was 29% overall, 31% to 33% in each group under 60 and 21% to 25% in the groups over 60. NAR's age groups differ between the two reports (33 and under then, 26 to 34 now), so the comparison is between surveys, not the same people ten years older.

The tour figures moved less. The 2014 list asked about "virtual video tours", rated very useful by 43%, and the 2025 list about "virtual tours", at 41%, so the two questions may not mean quite the same thing. Within the 2025 figures, buyers aged 35 to 44 rated tours highest, at 47%. The youngest group NAR shows, 26 to 34, put them at 36%, below buyers aged 45 to 59 (42%) and 60 to 69 (38%).

Younger buyers also look past the front door. In the 2025 report, neighbourhood information was rated very useful by 39% of buyers aged 35 to 44, the highest of any group, against 25% at 79 and over, and buyers under 45 rated interactive maps very useful at 35% to 37%, against 13% to 18% over 70. That is where the places around the home belong in a listing, the station, the shops, the schools and the parks, along with what the rooms allow, such as a room that works as an office.

Why the Layers Add Up Instead of Taking Turns

None of the three expectations replaced the one before it. In the 2025 figures, photos and detailed information are the two features rated very useful most often in every age group, and every group rated floor plans very useful more often than tours or videos. Buyers of different ages differ in degree: younger buyers use phones more and rate video and maps higher, while buyers aged 70 to 78 rated the agent's contact details very useful far more often (55%) than buyers aged 26 to 34 (37%). The larger gaps between generations lie in what they need around the home, such as a short commute or a nearby clinic.

The buyers themselves change, too. In NAR's 2014 report, Millennials, then called Gen Y and born from 1980 to 1995, were the largest group of buyers, at 31%. In NAR's 2026 Generational Trends report, covering purchases from July 2024 to June 2025, Baby Boomers were, at 42%, with Millennials at 26%. A package aimed at the generation a provider expects can miss the people who actually buy. It works better to give every listing all three layers, the photos for the idea, the facts and the plan for the details, and the tour and video for the story, and to shape the mix around the listing and the places its buyers look.

What Buyers Open, Not When They Were Born

Which layer a listing's buyers lean on shows in what they open. With Giraffe360, the photos, the floor plan and the virtual tour come from one capture of the home, so the three layers don't take three visits, and a video can be built later from the project's clips and photos when the agent wants one.

Analytics then counts the views of each published tour over the dates you choose, as total or unique views, and breaks them down by device, by where the views came from, such as social media, search or email, and by country. Unique views aren't a count of buyers. They do show whether a tour is opened mostly on phones or reached from social posts, which is a better guide to the next package than a guess at its buyers' ages.