Statistics
The 403% more inquiries stat: where it comes from
Updated October 2026
The earliest source we could find is a March 2012 guest article by a video production company that says listings with video get 403% more enquiries on an Australian portal; in March 2013 trade press quoted one Melbourne agency's CEO giving the same figure from its own annual review. Neither publishes a method, a sample or a comparison group, and we found no NAR document that contains the number. It is an old marketing claim, not a measured US result, so do not use it as evidence.
Sources on this page were fetched on 5 October 2026. Archived copies were used where the original sites no longer serve the article.
If you have searched for real estate video statistics you have seen it: “listings with video receive 403% more inquiries.” It sits in blog posts, vendor pages and listing presentations, usually credited to NAR or to a recent year. We went looking for where it actually comes from.
The chain, oldest source first
| Date | Source | What it actually says |
|---|---|---|
| 18 March 2012 | Guest article by the director of a video production company, published on an Australian real estate technology site (PropTechNOW, “Online video marketing skyrockets for business in 2012”) | Says listings with video “receive 403% more enquiries on domain.com.au than listings without.” No method or sample is given. The author sells video production. |
| 12 March 2013 | Trade press (Real Estate Business, “Video listings get 400 per cent more enquiries”) | The CEO of Jellis Craig, a Melbourne agency, says: “In 2012, real estate agents experienced a 403 per cent increase in enquiries on average when their property marketing featured an online video.” The article attributes this to the agency’s Annual Property Review and headlines it as “according to one Melbourne agency.” The same article quotes an agent who finds that video adds little. |
| 13 June 2014 | Vendor blog (Show My Property, “Apartment Video Listings Get 403% More Inquiries”) | Repeats the number as “the headline number” for apartment video and ends with a pitch for its own video service. |
| 2026 | Current blog posts, such as a Denver title company’s post | Repeats it as “NAR data compiled across 2026 industry reports” and links to an Amplifiles blog post. When we fetched that post, it linked to the 2014 vendor post above. |
What is wrong with using it
- No method. Neither 2012 source says how many listings, over what period, or compared with what. “On average” is not a sample.
- No control. Agents who commission a video may also be the ones who also price well, photograph well and market harder. A listing with video getting more enquiries does not show the video caused it.
- A seller of video is the earliest voice. The first appearance we found is a production company’s own article. The second is one agency’s self-report.
- Wrong place and time. Both original sources are Australian, from 2012, and concern enquiries on property portals. Nothing in them measures a US reel on Instagram or TikTok.
- The attribution drifted. The 2012 and 2013 sources tie the number to a portal and to one agency. By 2026 it is “NAR data”. We found no NAR report that contains it; our stats page flags it as unsupported too.
We cannot prove a negative: it is possible an earlier source exists, or that the number was measured on a real dataset the 2012 authors did not publish. If one turns up we will update this page. Until then it is a quotation from a marketing article, not a finding.
What to use instead
NAR’s 2025 Technology Survey, which we read in full for the stats page, has social media as the top source of quality leads, ranked first by 39% of agents. That is a statement about where agents find leads, not about video lifting inquiries, and it is a better argument for staying visible on the feed than any multiplier.
For a seller conversation, the stronger evidence is your own: the views, shares and messages a reel on their listing actually earned. A photo reel is a way to put a listing in front of people regularly; it is not walkthrough footage and does not claim what a walkthrough shows. If you want to see how a plan is built and approved before it renders, the guide to using Kadapt covers it, and the free script generator drafts the voiceover.
More stat checks and straight answers are in agent questions, answered.
Common questions
Is it true that listings with video get 403% more inquiries?
There is no evidence that it is. The figure traces to a 2012 Australian claim with no published method, and today's copies add attributions (NAR, 2024, 2026 industry reports) that we could not find in any primary document. Video may well help a listing, but this number does not show it.
Does NAR say listings with video get more inquiries?
We found no NAR report containing the 403% figure. NAR's 2025 Technology Survey, which we do cite, ranks social media as agents' top source of quality leads (39%), a different measure of a different thing.
Why do so many pages still repeat it?
It is a round, dramatic, easy-to-cite number, and each page that repeats it becomes the citation for the next. The chain we traced runs from a 2012 article through a 2013 trade-press quote to a 2014 vendor blog post and on to 2026 blog posts that link to that vendor post and call it NAR data.
What should I say to a seller who quotes it?
That video gives a listing another way to be shared and seen, and that you will show them the actual views and saves on their reel. A measured result from their own listing is more persuasive than a statistic from 2012.
Judge video by what it does for your feed, not by a borrowed number
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