Sentiment-based commercial real estate forecasting with Google search volume data

Marian Alexander Dietzel, Nicole Braun and Wolfgang Schäfers

Journal of Property Investment & Finance, 2014, vol. 32, issue 6, 540-569

Abstract: Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine internet search query data provided by “Google Trends”, with respect to its ability to serve as a sentiment indicator and improve commercial real estate forecasting models for transactions and price indices. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper examines internet search query data provided by “Google Trends”, with respect to its ability to serve as a sentiment indicator and improve commercial real estate forecasting models for transactions and price indices. Findings - – The empirical results show that all models augmented with Google data, combining both macro and search data, significantly outperform baseline models which abandon internet search data. Models based on Google data alone, outperform the baseline models in all cases. The models achieve a reduction over the baseline models of the mean squared forecasting error for transactions and prices of up to 35 and 54 per cent, respectively. Practical implications - – The results suggest that Google data can serve as an early market indicator. The findings of this study suggest that the inclusion of Google search data in forecasting models can improve forecast accuracy significantly. This implies that commercial real estate forecasters should consider incorporating this free and timely data set into their market forecasts or when performing plausibility checks for future investment decisions. Originality/value - – This is the first paper applying Google search query data to the commercial real estate sector.

Keywords: Forecasting; Prices; Google trends; Commercial real estate; Investment process; Search query data; Sentiment; Transactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jpifpp:v:32:y:2014:i:6:p:540-569

DOI: 10.1108/JPIF-01-2014-0004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Property Investment & Finance is currently edited by Nick French

More articles in Journal of Property Investment & Finance from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().