How the Grinch Stole Christmas From Realtors

Published by Joseph Ferrara December 22nd, 2008 in humor and selltoons.

According to Compete, monthly visits to third party real estate sites Trulia & Zillow have been trending down since about August 2008 — monthly visitors to Trulia are down 21% and Zillow 7% over the past month. (note: compared to the same month last year, Zillow, however, shows a 48.4% increase, to Trulia’s 25.6%)

This decreased visitor traffic seems to be in keeping with Trulia’s recent Grinch, aka Harris, poll, which claimed “70 percent of non-homeowners surveyed say they have no plans to purchase a new home in the next year” and a whopping “92 percent of homeowners say they plan on just staying put over the next 12 months.” (Survey also said nearly half of 18-34 year olds say it’s too costly to buy.)

With the Grinch having stole Christmas from Realtors, perhaps it’s time for a sale on featured real estate listings and agent ads.

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ARDELL

i just got an email (spam) heralding a screaming Christmas Special on "Cherry Picked Leads". :)

David G

Joe -

Real Estate is a seasonal business. If you look at web traffic to real estate sites over multiple years you'll learn that a Q4 downturn in volume is to be expected - http://tinyurl.com/7fd3ec

Zillow's traffic is actually surprisingly strong for this time of year (touch wood.) In November Zillow had 5,3 million unique users only slightly down from our peak months.

One reason that Zillow traffic is up is Mortgage rates are way down. I don't know about the Grinch but Santa Claus is delivering mortgages and refi's around 5% on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace which is a VERY welcome gift for home-buyers and anyone needing to refinance.

Karen Highland

That chart looks pretty much like a normal real estate cycle. Nothing grinch-worthy. But then, I'm feeling like the 'spirit of grinch' has displaced the spirit of Christmas this year, with all the negative news bombarding us all the time.

jfsellsius

The Grinch referred to the Trulia Harris poll findings.

schenk

If 70% are not going to be buying a home, that means 30% of all non-homeowners are going to buy. If that happens, we will Realtors will have a very good 2009!