New Technology Leads to Contemporaneous Forecasting of Home Sales

Pending and completed home sales are significant prognosticators of how the national economy is trending. Home sales and the utilization of contractors like Avalanche Roofing are also used to predict the health of state and local economies and economic activity. The economy is said to be in much better health when contractors are hired to make renovation, remodeling, and other improvements to a home. To give governmental leaders and home sellers a better idea of what to expect, a new home sales forecasting service developed by Google has been developed. The new application, called “Nowcast”, aims to provide real-time data about pending and finalized single-family home sales, explains this article on DSNews.com. This technology may offer never before seen accuracy and detail of real estate activities.

How Nowcast Works

Nowcast is a joint venture between Auction.com and Google. It combines reported real estate transactions, industry data, Google trends data and proprietary transactional data to create a forecast. The complex algorithms are used to produce a statistical report about a month”s home sales weeks before similar reports are released by other sources such as the National Association of Realtors.

Applications of Nowcast

Many different groups will be able to put the economic forecasting provided by Nowcast to work. For real estate agents, they may be able to direct home sellers in popular areas to list homes at a higher price. Real estate agents working with home buyers can help them time their transactions optimally. Local governments can use the insight provided by Nowcast to aim resources at communities in need of assistance such as low interest loans. Local and state governments can also use the information to make estimates related to tax revenue from home sales. Nationally, the information can be put to use in analyzing the strength of consumer confidence in the overall economy.

Why Timing Is Important in Forecasting Sales Trends

The real estate market can be highly volatile especially in micro-economies. Being able to track trends associated with listing prices and sales prices can help buyers and sellers get the best possible experience from their real estate transactions. Instead of waiting until November to get an accurate report on what happened with home sales in September, industry professionals and government entities will have access to the data on a real-time basis. The September sales information would be released in a Nowcast report no later than the middle of October, which is nearly a month earlier than the National Association of Realtors would release their statistical information on existing residential home sales activities.

The Future of Nowcast Reports

In the future, Auction.com and Google plan to expand the Nowcast reports to include data about the sales of new homes. Another goal of the project is to analyze the intent to buy or sell a home based upon internet searches. The project will continue to hone algorithms and test different variables to see which ones are the best predictors of actual real estate transactions. Based upon Nowcast”s estimates for six months of sales activity for 2014, the current algorithms are highly accurate and predict actual sales activity within a small range of error.