Dive Brief:
- A Realtor.com study has found that Dec. 28 is the online real estate industry’s Black Friday — one of the busiest days for Internet real estate searches of the entire year. Realtor.com found that while searches slowed on Thanksgiving and the day after, Internet traffic was mostly back to normal by the Saturday after the holiday.
- Realtor.com compared its search traffic on Thanksgiving Day 2014 with that of an average day in 2014’s fourth quarter, and then identified states where house-hunting activity appeared to be most and least impacted by the holiday. The site found that the severity of a slowdown in searches depends on geographic location. Thanksgiving Day search traffic in Hawaii was only down 10%, while traffic in New Hampshire was down nearly 60%.
- However, the numbers tell a different story if potential buyers actually need to leave their homes. The number of scheduled open houses on the weekend after Thanksgiving will be only 6% of the number of open houses during the prior weekend, resulting in less competition from other buyers.
Dive Insight:
Realtor.com also looked at search activity on other major holidays. The single slowest search day is Dec. 24, or Christmas Eve. However, aside from the end of December, New Year’s Day is also a high-traffic day. Realtor.com said that could either be a result of many people still off work for the holiday, or even a New Year’s resolution to buy a house.
Other top-performing holidays are July 6 (when buyers can take advantage of a long Fourth of July holiday) and Labor Day. On the flip side, traffic slows significantly on Valentine’s Day.
Predicting homebuying activity based on Internet searches is also something researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland researched earlier this year. Analysts maintained that there was a correlation between the volume of web searches for "real estate agent," "mortgage broker," "first home," and "mortgage calculator" — and actual home sales.
Also, in September, Jonathan Smoke, Realtor.com's chief economist, estimated that millennials, ages 25 to 34, are 70% more likely than the average adult to be currently looking for a home to buy on Realtor.com, and almost 65% of millennials ages 21 to 34 looked at real estate websites and apps in August.
