Coldwell Banker Premier Realty

Economic Indicators


Non-traditional indicators
Posted: April 08, 2010 by John McClelland

This post dovetails off of a Wall Street Journal article printed today called "New Ways to Read Economy." I've seen the diesel fuel sales and the counting of train passengers but I think one of the neatest indicators (or at least a gauge of interest) is Google Trends, which shows trends in visitor traffic by search term.

Here are some examples.




You can see that the housing tax credit is still on an upward trend, though spikes occur around news releases.

The search for Las Vegas hotels has jumped substantially from the latter months of 2009 and then leveled off. The vertical jump in December was most likely a result of CityCenter's debut, although it looks like there is some sustained interest.

Short sales are the new big concept following a couple years of "REO" dominating housing headlines. A lot of people want to know how to short sell a home.

Luckily, for all of those short sellers out there (of homes, not stock), there are homebuyers too. I used the term, "how to buy a house" because I thought that's what a first-time buyer would type in. It's a clear upward trend with some seasonality evident. Searches jump in the beginning of the year and taper off towards the end. 2009 was a little different, with a peak in the middle of the year. That's about the time we experienced really good sales in Las Vegas and an end to the big price declines.



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