Real Estate Looking Up? Comparing Home and Apartment Queries

Last months release of April real estate figures indicates an uptick in the market. Existing home sales of 4.68MM for April were up 2.9% compared to March. New home sales registered a very slight increase of .2% or 352,000 new homes for the month. Even though housing starts were down a dismal 12.8%, when you pull out multifamily dwellings, single family homes actually showed an increase of 2.8% for April.
 
As we've shown in the past, search data around the real estate market can help us figure out market direction. Based on the assumption that most home buyers in today's Internet age start their home purchase mission online, searches for terms such as "homes for sale" should correlate to the NAR Existing Home Sales number.
 
Here's a three year chart on search volume for "homes for sale":

While we saw a promising uptick in home purchase related searches earlier this year, over the last two weeks that upward trend seems temporary. In the past, we found it very illuminating to examine the competitive substitute of apartment rental searches alongside home sales purchases to get a better sense

In March this year we saw another promising signal, the drop in "apartments for rent" searches compared to "homes for sale." Unfortunately, over the last two weeks apartment searches have surged counter to the drop in home sales queries. Looks like April's positive outlook may be short-lived.

Posted via email from Yellow Door Media