IRVINE, CA—Auction.com, has launched the realestate industry's first Nowcast, a new housingreport that combines industry data, proprietary companytransactional data and publicly available GoogleTrends. The platform is designed to predict market trendsas they are occurring—weeks ahead of the the findings of otherbenchmark studies.

While the most frequently-referenced real estate market reportsare dependent on the completion of closings and delayed by therecording process, Auction.com's proprietary forecasting modeldelivers highly accurate real-time market data. Findings from thefirst Auction.com Nowcast reveal that existing home sales inOctober will fall between seasonally adjusted averages of 4.967 and5.380 million annual sales, with a targeted prediction of5.178 million.
The new report is based on data modeling developed by Google chiefconomist Hal Varian, who defines Nowcasting as“contemporaneous forecasting” – basically an ability to predictwhat is happening as it occurs. Auction.com applied Varian'stheories regarding the use of publicly available and anonymousGoogle Trends data to the specific question of predictingreal estate market activity.
“Google Trends data – which is anonymized, publicly availablesearch information – offers valuable insights into current economicand consumer trends,” noted Varian. “By layering industry-specifictransactional data and subject matter expertise over that searchdata, organizations such as Auction.com are able to create powerfulpredictive models for accurately forecasting buying behavior in thepresent and for the coming months.”
Auction.com plans to issue its monthly Nowcast near themiddle of each month, once analysis can becompleted on early economic, industry and proprietary transactionaldata combined with related online search term activity thatindicates home buying intent. The company is currently runningmultiple models and layering in additional information variables toincrease its accuracy in predicting existing home sales for thegiven month, with the intention of expanding upon this ability inthe future to similarly predict new home sales as well as homepricing trends.
“Auction.com's ability to deliver timely analysis of current marketconditions can provide critical insight and enhanced predictabilityto industry professionals, economists and government entitiesalike,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice presidentfor Auction.com. “Since real estate trends play such a vital rolein our overall economy, there's a compelling need for accurate,more timely housing market forecasts, rather than data that comesout two to four weeks later.”
Internal testing for the months of April through September,2014 (see below) showed considerable accuracy in terms ofAuction.com's ability to predict market performance.
“We're thrilled to be able to launch the Auction.com Real EstateNowcast – a very tangible result of our strategic relationship withGoogle Capital,” said Jeff Frieden, CEO andco-founder of Auction.com. “Their guidance, along with the adviceof Google employees such as Dr. Varian, has helped us really makethe most of Google Trends data as we seek to provide a bettersnapshot of the real estate market for consumers, investors andreal estate professionals.”

*Source: TheNational Association of REALTORS