I did a search for “houses for rent” on Google Trends. If you are not familiar with Google Trends, give it a test drive - it is pretty neat for a little while and then you get bored with it. I return to it every so often to see if trends are matching the previous year.
Google Trends - “houses for rent”As you can see there is a seasonal down turn after August each year and then a large upswing starting right after Christmas.
Both of these seasonal events also match what we see in our logs as well.
The sharp upswing right after Christmas always intrigues me. I know that week many people are on vacation or not in college, spending quality time with the family. I am guessing after all the Christmas cheer has die down and people are getting tired of the in-laws they turn to the computer to do some surfing. For some reason they surf for houses for rent.
But why is that phrase searched so much at that time? My guess is that college students are looking for a place for the next semester. But that doesn’t make much sense because college usually starts up the 2nd or 3rd week in January, I would think that they start their search much earlier - like at the beginning of December.
So my best guess is that people are tired of the quality family time and are looking for a better place to live for the new year. Anyone have other guesses?
[tags]Google Trends, house rentals[/tags]
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6 users responded in this post
I just thought that the question would be slightly better rephrased: Why aren’t people searching for “houses for rent” as much during Sept - Dec. To me, it looks like January isn’t anything extraordinarily special. It just doesn’t have “the fall dip.”
I would guess the answer is that people are busier — back to school, christmas shopping, holiday parties, cold weather — and people just don’t want to move during those months if they can help it. Pent-up demand + the new year’s effect (everyone wants a new start in the new year) might explain the consistent spike.
Robert,
I wonder if the Sept - Dec slow down also matches with the real estate market.
I just compared “houses for rent” and “homes for sale” and the two track pretty well. I think your theory is right.
Dave
Yeah i would agree, I think it has a lot to do with all of those things…especially the back to school thing because we are talking about houses for rent, NOT apartments…the typical person who really prefers renting a house over an apartment is a family with school age children who want that better neighborhood/school!
Hey Dave,
I hope that “spike” right after Christmas that happend last year makes a repeat performance this year!
Interesting post!
DB
Here is a great artical from the census bureau. It is from 1998 but data should be relatively constant year over year. It talks about the seasonality of when people move.
http://www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/p70-66.pdf
Dan,
Thanks for that link, that does offer some great info.
Now that we know when they move, the question becomes when do they start looking for a rental, is it a month out or longer like two or three months from the time they actually move.