Dive Brief:

• Google search terms could reveal who will buy homes in the near future, according to researchers at the at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

• An economist and two analysts at the bank who studied trends in keyword choices among house hunters discovered a correlation between home sales and the volume of web searches for “real estate agent,” “mortgage broker,” “first home,” and “mortgage calculator.”

• For example, the search terms “first home” and “mortgage calculator” are far less popular now than they were in 2004, before the housing bubble burst. That could be a sign that fewer would-be newcomers, who are likely to be concerned about whether they can afford monthly mortgage payments, are planning to buy homes, the authors said.

Dive Insight:

The advantage of studying the use of search terms is that the results are immediate, “so it can provide a measure of current demand,” the authors said in a press release. Plus, keyword searches reveal more about the online shopper than data like current sales prices or sales volume do, they said.