Archive for November 7th, 2009

Research from What House? Awards sponsor Google suggests, if logging on and looking is an accurate barometer, the new homes market is rallying.

Whether or not the property market recovery is real, perceived or the cruellest of false dawns nobody knows, but everybody has a theory.

Just when I was feeling chipper and practicing my cartwheels as survey after survey and index after index told us we were out of the woods, up pops dear old economist Roger Bootle who tells me house prices are heading for another fall.

Economics is a dry old sport, as well as an inexact science, and Bootle, writing in The Daily Telegraph, says inflation and rising earnings used to make a dent in the mortgage burden, but not any more and affordability is deceptive because interest rates are so low. Also so few properties are on the market, that any house price indices are distorted.

“Just as with other asset markets, price movements that take place on small volumes are not dependable as indicators of underlying supply and demand. We saw a similar brief respite in the early 1990s housing market downturn, only for house prices to resume their downward path,” said Bootle. You run the hot bath; I’ll get the razor blades.

So I turn to digital to renew my faith in the recovery. Until now the best barometer was the Bates Bubblewrap Barometer, based on a friend moving home and going to B & Q to buy bubblewrap to pack his ornaments only to be told they were out of stock – proof that people were moving house, or, as Eeyore Bootle, would no doubt retort, being repossessed.

However Google, among this year’s prestigious What House? Awards sponsors, have a little more data to analyse than sales of bubblewrap and have shared it with Showhouse.

It is nothing new to report that the internet is the primary source of information when looking to buy a new home, but Bickey Russell, a senior industry analyst at Google UK, has come up with some interesting insights.

The first half of this year saw unique visitors to property sites up 15 percent and in the same period searches for the term ‘house prices’ rose 28 percent, having seen falls in 2008 and queries related to property up 11 percent.

Developers and agents like to talk about buying seasons, but Russell says “There is no such thing as seasonal traffic anymore.” New homes are on the way back, with searches for brand new property up 20 percent year on year in the first six months of 2009.

“Searches for new homes are nearing levels seen in 2007 during the property boom,” said Russell.

Google research also suggests that the public believes the days of the bargain are numbered, with queries relating to bargain properties, such as ‘repossessed homes’, ‘property auctions,’ and ‘cheap properties’, down by 55 percent since February.

“One of the key changes in the way people search for property is the days they do it. There has been a major shift from searching taking place mid to end of week, to now searching mostly on Mondays and Tuesdays,” said Russell.

While the male/female ratio is almost 50/50, the over 50s demographic is rising; proof that the silver surfer, or the going grey at the temples kayaker, is seeking digital enhancement.

While many buyers do not understand them when they find them and uncertain if they are eligible for them, new incentive schemes, such as HomeBuy Direct, have been getting a lot of searches. If only they could find the answers.

“News such as policy announcements related to the property sector have an immediate and considerable impact on query volumes,” said Russell. When the Stamp Duty holiday was announced in September last year Google saw a 500 percent spike in people searching for information. Russell says, as well as using Google Insights for Search to monitor search behaviour and trends, and advertising on housing market keywords, you can run a campaign budget around a short-term search uplift following an important property news announcement. That makes tracking the activity of housing minister John Healey – is he still housing minister? One never knows these days - a worthwhile exercise. Or, with the Tories set for power next year, following shadow housing minister Grant Shapps on Twitter.

Now Shapps, a speaker at last year’s What House? Awards, was one of the angelic MPs during the recent expenses scandal, but could the next scandal be policy makers leaking key terms ahead of key announcements to companies to buy keyword campaigns on the web? You read it here first.

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