[Anonymous]

I’m grateful to Adiep for pointing Google trends out to me elsewhere. The one for Spanish property makes interesting viewing. From what I can make out, these are basically Google’s stats for people doing a search on “Spanish Property”.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=spanish+property&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

As you can see, there is no real surprise here, the peak time was in the early/middle part of this decade. There has been significantly less interest in the last few years, this despite the fact that the subject has been more in the news. Crucially there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an uptick. If anything the trend appears to be still downwards.

That is what I see but I’m open to anyone else’s interpretaton of this graph.

[katy]

Meaningless anyway as many people who search spanish property already own property there.

[Anonymous]

Its clear that the trend has gone downwards but I dont think its easy to say that its meaningless or that its down to current Spanish property owners.
Once December sets in the interest in any kind of purchase other than Xmas shopping is pretty much out of the window.
Probably the Summer peaks are down to rental searches as I have seen these becoming more important on Google searches once Spanish Property is typed in.
Interest for any kind of real estate has gone down a lot; just try Cyprus, French, Turkish property, they all have the same behaviour and even the UK market moves in a similar way with a pre-Summer and Xmas lull.

[peterhun]

@katy wrote:

Meaningless anyway as many people who search spanish property already own property there.

So you are saying there is less people who already own property in Spain than there was five years ago?

[Anonymous]

@peterhun wrote:

@katy wrote:

Meaningless anyway as many people who search spanish property already own property there.

So you are saying there is less people who already own property in Spain than there was five years ago?

I would say that thousands of Brits have returned home over the past three years when the pound was devalued by 25%. Although most pensioners living in Spain have a private pension as well as the state one, a 25% drop might be too much for them.

Younger Brits have had to go home when they became unemployed or their businesses failed.

[adiep]

@katy wrote:

Meaningless anyway as many people who search spanish property already own property there.

You can alter the search to give results per search requesters country.

[adiep]

So that’s thats quite an interesting insight. change the search location to spain and it doesnt register, quite simply the search traffic levels are too low. move it to the UK and you can see the expected downward trend, move to Ireland and interestingly you can see an upward search trend post lehmans. The paddy’s looking for a bargain.

You have to bear in mind that its only giving you data for that exact search string, so if you want to know what Germans are searching for, you need to use the german language equivalent.

[katy]

Still meaningless, lots of dreamers on the web. No-one knows why they are looking. I look at world cruises sometimes, especially in the penthouse suites. 😆 The idea that there are thousands of potential buyers just looking for prices to fall further is frankly ridiculous.

[adiep]

hey, you are missing the point. google trends is a tool for spotting search trends, thats all. people can draw their own conclusions. to me, it clear that searches for the phrase “spanish property” are in a steep decline. anyone can take whatever spin they choose, but its a good tool for what it offers. albeit for free.

[Anonymous]

I’m 100% with adiep on this. It is not meaningless but simply one source of data and its up to you how you chose to interpret it.

My reading is that it shows that interest in Spanish property from English speaking countries has declined significantly since the early part of the decade and that it currently shows no sign of any uptick. Perhaps if you put in the Norwegian for “Spanish property” you might see one. I’ve tried the Dutch “Spaanse huizen” and it shows nothing.

What I’d expect to see is an increase in this trend before any uptick in the market.

[Anonymous]

Used intelligently and sparingly, Google can be your friend, but most people misuse it and merely find what they want to find. If you Google to find out if there is a God, you can either find one, in fact you will be able to find several (Gods), or be convinced that there isn’t one.

It’s much the same with newspaper articles on the world’s economy, or in this forum’s specific interest in Spain. The Euro-sceptics are just that, sceptical of anything to do with Europe (including Spain). Spanish, French and to a lesser extent the Germans take the opposite view and believe their union is a solid one.

Who do you believe? I confess to not knowing the answer, but I use Google very carefully – I have a website and have found that the visitors statistics are not very informative as a measure of the small amount of income I receive from my site. Clicking on something is not the same as handing your money over.

[Anonymous]

Rocker is absolutely right. In this forum, like in any other when there is an issue of opinion there will always be links and websites for and against. And like Rocker says, I don’t have the answer either but its always good to hear both sides.
With Spanish Property searches, its such broad term so until it becomes more powerful and it registers very low search numbers which will be the way to go in the future. Niche markets and micro segments.

[Anonymous]

Rocker is absolutely right. In this forum, like in any other when there is an issue of opinion there will always be links and websites for and against. And like Rocker says, I don’t have the answer either but its always good to hear both sides.
With Spanish Property searches, its such broad term so until it becomes more powerful and it registers very low search numbers which will be the way to go in the future. Niche markets and micro segments.

[peterhun]

@marjal wrote:

Rocker is absolutely right. In this forum, like in any other when there is an issue of opinion there will always be links and websites for and against. And like Rocker says, I don’t have the answer either but its always good to hear both sides.

Do either of you understand the meaning of the title of this thread Trends?

–verb (used without object)
4.
to have a general tendency, as events, conditions, etc.
5.
to tend to take a particular direction; extend in some direction indicated.
6.
to veer or turn off in a specified direction, as a river, mountain range, etc.: The river trends toward the southeast.

Its not an opinion, its a CHANGE of opinion. Its the same source, same term and its has reduced in popularity. Google has gained in popularity over time and its the absolutely dominant search engine.

Given the fact that foreign buyers have decreased by 90% (fact, not opinion) then a 75% fall in searches is to be expected, its hardly something to be disputed.

[adiep]

I have faith that between us humble user on this here internet forum, we’d find a way to dispute black is indeed black 🙂

[adiep]

Coincidence perhaps?

Note the peak in 2006/2007 and the trend since then?

Of course, there’s no correlation here, one is actual sales to foreigners and one is the amount of foreigners searching for results based on the phrase “spanish property”.. Why should they be related?

(excuse the heavily sarcastic tone)

[adiep]

BTW, there is a nice new one we can play with

Google Internet Stats

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/

[zoro]

@adiep wrote:

Coincidence perhaps?

Note the peak in 2006/2007 and the trend since then?

Of course, there’s no correlation here, one is actual sales to foreigners and one is the amount of foreigners searching for results based on the phrase “spanish property”.. Why should they be related?

(excuse the heavily sarcastic tone)

Hi Adiep…. A most interesting graph, however I’m not so sure it supports your implied assertion of a direct correlation between searches and sales.

The graph you have posted is a relative scale graph and the time period you have chosen shows when searches were above the average for the period chosen and when not. It seems to me that the number of searches during the 2006/7 period were lower on aggregate (flat lining for much of the time) than the aggregate for the later years. According to Google the spikes supposedly correspond with news stories about Spanish Property at the time.

Still, it may be that you are on to something in which case you will be able to predict when the Spanish Property market will bottom. Good Luck.

[adiep]

Hi Zoro, Im making an assumption that Google havent been maintaining search history data integrity or “trends” is missing out on some data. Wonder if they have been purging the DB every Q4 or something, or does search traffic really drop off like that in Q4? Be nice to have another source to verify.

But if you are feeling charitable, apply some smoothing and fill the spikes and troughs you get a pretty straight line downwards IMO.

Picking the bottom wont be hard eitherway.

[adiep]

oh hum, we have another tool here, provided by Google — Google Insights

http://www.google.com/insights/search/?hl=en-GB#q=spanish%20%2B%20property&cmpt=q

Not sure what this is giving an insight into though 🙂

EDIT: well thats interesting, this search is UK specific and seems to confirm the Q4 dip in each year, which tells us that google trends is picking up the same dip.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/?hl=en-GB#content=1&cat=29&geo=GB&q=spanish+%2B+property&cmpt=q

I like the forecast feature.

[Author]

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