CNBC’s Jane Wells is reporting that Internet data miners indicate the online search queries for “homes for sale” is up 42%, suggesting that the housing market is poised to pick up.
The reader who e-mailed me this article suggests maybe that the opposite is true. People are searching to see what homes are listed for in their neighborhood to gauge possible list prices.
According to some Internet data miners, online search queries could be a better economic indicator.Over the past five weeks, there’s been a 42% increase in the number of Internet searches involving the phrase “homes for sale,” according to Hitwise, a firm which measures Web traffic.
I for one hope that the market continues on it’s track in the Puget Sound region, but my sense is that this Fall will be an indicator of where the market will go. Thing is, I thought that to be the case last year. So,what do I know?
I’d be willing to bet that on-line seaches for [insert stock or mutual fund symbol] were up 42% in early 2000. Did that indicate a bounce?
Just some anecdotal evidence :
I’ve been telling anyone who would listen, since last winter, to get a free Zip account and watch DOM’s increases and price reductions.
Last winter and spring hardly anyone took me up on that. They just didn’t believe it was actually happening.
But now that the evidence is mounting and word’s getting out about the turning market, more people are geting those accounts and watching the market.
It’s giving a lot of would-be buyers hope to watch it fall.
Just signed up and did a search of listings with price reductions in Ballard (zip 98117). 77 listings…
So by checking the market to watch it fall, people are using this as an indicator that buyers are itching to buy?
It’s like Schrodinger’s cat. Buyers exist and don’t exist at the same time.
You can tell they’re getting desperate when they’re resorting to stats like this. When it goes from “homes closed” to “homes shown” to “homes asked about on the internet” you know things are bad.
This sort of deduction is simply someone “guessing” what a given set of statistics might mean and reading their own bias into it.
This sort of thing is especially rampant in “medical news”. How many times have you seen some medical story that follows this “formula”?
“Researchers in [fill in blank] found that out of [fill in blank] people who [fill in the blank], [fill in the blank] percent of these people had [fill in the blank]. Therefore, researchers think that [fill in the blank].
Then another study comes out the following week to prove exactly the opposite!!
No hard science here. Just hit and miss guessing.
Gives the word “speculation” yet another negative connotation.