"Geco" and its potential for real estate research: Evidence from the US housing market

Abstract

Over the past few years, Google econometrics (Geco) turns out to be a powerful tool for research based on individuals rational. Following the seminal work of Ginsberg et al. (2009), this is the second academic journal contribution to be based on search query data from Google Insights for Search (I4S). Existing information on the Home Buying Process is embedded into existing literature on the price-volume relationship in the housing market. The main findings are: I4S subcategories yield inferences about prices and transactions in the near future. While the “Real Estate Agency” subcategory serves as a very robust indicator of transaction volume, "Home Financing" provides interesting insights into the corresponding financing decisions. Therefore, this study contributes towards improving the infor-mational efficiency of a relatively imperfect market and is addressed to policy makers as well as real estate professionals.