Comments on: House Price Searches Soar as Prices Plummet

By: Ray Santillan

Ray Santillan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:23:43 +0000

I’m curious to know what the top search phrases are for foreclosures. A blog post on this topic would be interesting to see since President Elect Obama has vowed to help the americans losing their homes to foreclosure because of job loss, preditory lending, etc.
Thank you,
Ray Santillan

By: Real Estate Blogger

Real Estate Blogger — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:09:28 +0000

We have a consistent interest in US real estate from our overseas buyers attracted to the mix of low prices and strong Euro and Pound against the dollar. For those who had a life plan to retire to Florida for example christmas has come early!

By: Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:48:49 +0000

Matt, Thanks for the comment. Great question and it led me to do a bit of follow up analysis. The volume of US searches for “homes for sale” was much higher than searches for “houses for sale” until quite recently. In fact, last week, searches for “houses for sale” overtook searches for “homes for sale” for the first time. Searches for “houses for sale” were declining steadily (along with searches for “homes for sale”) until February when they started to climb.
I wonder if the news of the financial crisis and media coverage of the housing market has caused a change in the language we use to search for homes (or houses) for sale. I should add that I ran our search term analysis report for both terms to see where consumers go after searching for both homes and houses for sale. The results are very similar. This indicates that the consumer intent for both queries is similar.
Thanks again for the comment – and for keeping me on my toes!
Best, Heather

By: Matt Carter

Matt Carter — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:05:55 +0000

This looks quite different than the analysis you did in April, when you used “homes for sale” sted of “houses for sale.”
The last analysis you did showed a steady decline in share of searches from March 2007 to December 2008, while this latest one shows more ups and downs and no obvious trend during that period.
Makes me wonder how useful these search terms are in gauging buyer interest if they are so different, and also if the spike you are now seeing in “houses for sale” also shows up in “homes for sale.”