Auction.com LLC, which got a $50
million investment from Google Inc. (GOOGL:US) in March, said it will use
the Internet-search company’s big-data capabilities to try to
predict U.S. home sales and other trends ahead of competitors.
The new product, known as Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast,
based on Google Trends information and other data, predicts that
existing homes will sell at an annual pace of 5.18 million in
October, according to a statement today. That estimate is ready
about four weeks before the National Association of Realtors
reports its seasonally adjusted annual sales rate, which was
5.17 million last month and 5.13 million in October 2013.
“It’s based on search activity right before they close on
a house,” Rick Sharga, executive vice president at Irvine,
California-based Auction.com, said in a telephone interview.
“As we back-tested this against about 10 years of data, the
results are pretty accurate.”
Real estate information companies such as Auction.com,
Zillow Inc. (Z:US), CoreLogic Inc. and RealtyTrac are jockeying to
harness technology to give individual and professional consumers
a market edge. Auction.com uses Google Trends data to look at
searches such as those for real estate agents, property
listings, mortgage rates and home inspectors, Sharga said. It
also uses results from its online auctions of commercial and
residential real estate as well as publicly released housing-market data, he said.
‘Powerful’ Models
“By layering industry-specific transactional data and
subject-matter expertise over that search data, organizations
such as Auction.com are able to create powerful predictive
models for accurately forecasting buying behavior in the present
and for the coming months,” Hal Varian, chief economist at
Mountain View, California-based Google, said in the statement.
The National Association of Realtors relies on surveys of
members to compile its monthly sales figures, slowing the
release of results, Sharga said. The Realtors also report
pending home sales, a leading indicator of transactions. Other
companies, such as CoreLogic, rely on property-record filings,
which take even longer, he said.
Auction.com plans to begin issuing its national Real Estate
Nowcast in the middle of each month, with future reports
breaking out sales and pricing data on a regional and local
basis, Sharga said.
Google Trends, with data that go back to 2004, catalogs
information on numerous searches for such topics as shoes,
laptops and celebrities. Yesterday’s “hot searches” leader was
an article about 1976 Olympic decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner’s pink nail polish. The Google data are anonymous and
publicly available, according to Tim Drinan, a spokesman for the
company.
Mobile Applications
Closely held Auction.com, which is valued at $1.2 billion,
based on Google’s stake, also is working with the Internet
company to develop mobile and Web applications and improve its
search-engine optimization for marketing, Sharga said.
Auction.com, the largest U.S. online real estate auction
company, is on track to exceed last year’s sale of $7.4 billion
of 35,000 commercial and residential properties, he said.
The real estate information industry is consolidating. In
July, Seattle-based Zillow agreed to buy San Francisco-based
Trulia Inc. (TRLA:US) for $3.5 billion, and last month Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corp. (NWSA:US) made a deal to purchase Move Inc. (MOVE:US), the owner of
Realtor.com, for $950 million.
0 comments:
Post a Comment