Do Searches for "Homes for Sale" Correlate with Sold Homes?

Is the real estate market starting to bounce back? That's one of predictions floated by Bill Tancer of HitWise.com based on the popularity of the search term "Homes for Sale" over the past year when compared to actual home sales data from the National Association of Realtors:

Tancer claims that search terms are a leading indicator for consumer behavior, which intuitively makes a lot of sense. For example, I'm sure searches for flowers goes up in early February searches for Turkey recipes in rise in early November, and searches for, "How to treat sun burn" rocket after Spring Break.

However, I think the conclusion Tancer draws from the "Homes for Sale" search data is a bit suspect. He claims:

"Consumers interested in purchasing a home, likely search for "homes for sale" in advance of actually purchasing a home, from the data above, that gap can be anywhere between two weeks to a month."

Intuitively, does that make any sense? People can't make a decision about which iPod they want to buy in two weeks to a month, much less a home. And this doesn't account for the time between an accepted offer and the actual closing. While there likely is a correlation between the two sets of data presented above, the time line must be considerably longer than Tancer suggests.

Comments

1. Posted by: Bill Tancer on August 25, 2006 12:31 PM:

Ed,

You make an excellent point regarding the lead-time between searches for "homes for sale" and the NAR number (which btw, is closed sales), others have raised the same question in comments on my blog. I'm not exactly sure why the lead time isn't greater my best guess is that home buyers continue to search on the phrase throughout the entire buying process (anecdotal data but during my last two home purchases, being a pessimist, i was looking at other houses all the way through the process in case my deal fell through). Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking post.

-Bill

Required fields marked with: *
Name*:

Email Address*:

URL:
Remember personal info?

Comments*:

HTML Tags you can use in your posts:
<b>Bold</b> = Bold
<i>Italicized</i> = Italicized
<a href="http://www.othersite.com">Link to Other Site</a> = Link to Other Site

Please keep comments on-topic. Contact authors or other commenters
directly for off-topic conversations.

Notify me of future comments via e-mail

Technology Evangelist Digest - Free Newsletter

Sign up for the free Technology Evangelist Digest to receive daily updates, editorials, and practical advice on emerging technology trends in hardware, software, webware, marketing and beyond.

Technology Evangelist Digest will keep you up to date on the technology trends that will help make you more productive and efficient both in business and your personal life.

Let's face it: If you made it to this line, you must have found something valuable on this page, right? Think about how cool it would be to have something free and interesting to read every day from Technology Evangelist by signing up today.

1. Fill in your email below,
2. Then click on the confirmation email you receive.
3. That's it. Your first Technology Evangelist Digest will arrive within 24 hours.