Earlier in the week, I shared a post about how I think COVID-19 will impact the real estate market. Since reading is hard and watching a video is easy, I also put together a video from my attic discussing the topic as well.  

Over the past week I’ve heard:

We believe in data at Union Street Media and are always looking to corroborate anecdotes with fact. When I attended a Real Estate Connect conference (as it was called back then) at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, I sat in on a discussion about how Google search activity could be used to predict future purchases (roughly six months out). This white paper from 2009 (yes, 2009!) explains the thesis.

On Thursday morning this week, I checked my Facebook wall and found this:

Facebook Post from Adam Dow of Dow Realty Group

Where did most of the visitors to adamdow.com come from on Tuesday, you ask?

Comments on Adam Dow's Facebook Post

For those of you who don’t know Adam Dow, he’s one of the most tech-forward real estate brokers I’ve ever met. It’s been an honor to work with him since 2005 (and I’m not just saying that since he’s likely going to read this post).  

With Adam’s permission, I checked the data. He was right. Not only was Tuesday his second highest trafficked day of the year (the other day beat out Tuesday by 2 unique visitors), it was higher than all but two days in 2019. Those days were outliers too as they overlapped with an aggressive Facebook campaign to promote several open houses in the peak of his 2019 season.  

Sure, you might say, everyone is looking and no one is actually going to do anything in this market … except that the site had 50% more conversions this past week than the week before.  

What does this mean? Like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, COVID-19 is the kind of event that changes the way we work and live. Once everyone starts working remotely, what makes you think they’ll just go back to the office? People will re-evaluate the place they call home as a result of the pandemic and it will lead to a lot of transactions.

It’s early innings in the battle against COVID-19. Over the coming weeks, we’re all going to be spending a lot of time at home, on the Internet and thinking about the future. I expect the highest traffic days on adamdow.com for 2020 are yet to come.