IRVINE, CA—Auction.com, has launched the real estate industry's first Nowcast, a new housing report that combines industry data, proprietary company transactional data and publicly available Google Trends. The platform is designed to predict market trends as they are occurring—weeks ahead of the the findings of other benchmark studies.

While the most frequently-referenced real estate market reports are dependent on the completion of closings and delayed by the recording process, Auction.com's proprietary forecasting model delivers highly accurate real-time market data. Findings from the first Auction.com Nowcast reveal that existing home sales in October will fall between seasonally adjusted averages of 4.967 and 5.380 million annual sales, with a targeted prediction of 5.178 million.
The new report is based on data modeling developed by Google chief conomist Hal Varian, who defines Nowcasting as “contemporaneous forecasting” – basically an ability to predict what is happening as it occurs. Auction.com applied Varian's theories regarding the use of publicly available and anonymous Google Trends data to the specific question of predicting real estate market activity.
“Google Trends data – which is anonymized, publicly available search information – offers valuable insights into current economic and consumer trends,” noted Varian. “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.”
Auction.com plans to issue its monthly Nowcast near the middle of each month, once analysis can be completed on early economic, industry and proprietary transactional data combined with related online search term activity that indicates home buying intent. The company is currently running multiple models and layering in additional information variables to increase its accuracy in predicting existing home sales for the given month, with the intention of expanding upon this ability in the future to similarly predict new home sales as well as home pricing trends.
“Auction.com's ability to deliver timely analysis of current market conditions can provide critical insight and enhanced predictability to industry professionals, economists and government entities alike,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for Auction.com. “Since real estate trends play such a vital role in our overall economy, there's a compelling need for accurate, more timely housing market forecasts, rather than data that comes out two to four weeks later.”
Internal testing for the months of April through September, 2014 (see below) showed considerable accuracy in terms of Auction.com's ability to predict market performance.
“We're thrilled to be able to launch the Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast – a very tangible result of our strategic relationship with Google Capital,” said Jeff Frieden, CEO and co-founder of Auction.com. “Their guidance, along with the advice of Google employees such as Dr. Varian, has helped us really make the most of Google Trends data as we seek to provide a better snapshot of the real estate market for consumers, investors and real estate professionals.”

*Source: The National Association of REALTORS