The expiration of the home buyer tax credit seems to have had surprisingly little impact upon online browsing by prospective home buyers. Leads produced over this past weekend by the 18 Broker Dynamix residential real estate websites reverted back to just slightly below normal levels. While we did not enjoy the healthy spike in leads that were experienced during the last two weekends in April, the first weekend of May was in line with the number of leads generated during the first two weekends in April.
While leads do not indicate how motivated potential home buyers are or the timeframe in which they are likely to close, the fact that online browsing activity has basically reverted back to the rates of early in the month may be a signal that the post tax credit dip in home sales may not be terribly severe. One of the Broker Dynamix websites actually had its best weekend for leads in over a month. Visitor traffic and browsing of homes for sale was also normal across the 18 Broker Dynamix real estate websites.
Using the last weekend in May as the base rate, the table below indicates that there was a spike in leads during the last two weeks in April, but other than that spike it is challenging to determine much of an impact on real estate leads from the tax credit.
Change in Leads by Weekend Versus May 27-28
May 27-28 100%
April 3-4 92%
April 10-11 96%
April 17-18 123%
April 24-25 130%
May 1-2 91%
Two days of healthy online real estate browsing activity by itself is not confirmation that the post credit dip may not be severe, but it certainly is a positive signal.
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