Australia surfs massive surge in searches for overseas property in January

Highlights

• 53% of indexed locations saw increases in searches, 47% decreases, 0.1% no changes
• Overall searches up 50% on January 2009 and up 64% on previous month
• Australia closes on the top 3 countries, with triple the searches on last month, and an increase of 71.5 % in market share
• Top 10 climbers and trending destinations dominated by Australian regions

Commentary

January kicked off with a bang thanks to Rightmove’s TV advertising accelerating the traditional New Year drive to change lifestyle.  Traffic on the site was up 30% on the same period last year, showing the British appetite for property seems to show no signs of slowing.

Commenting on the climbers and fallers in this month’s search chart Robin Wilson, Head of Overseas at Rightmove said:

“Sheila and Bruce will be popping corks and throwing another roo on the Barbie this month as Australia continues its climb up the charts, notching up an impressive 71% increase in market share. Australian searches are now a wallabies whisker from overtaking the USA to become the third most popular destination on Rightmove Overseas.

It’s an impressive showing given the long distances involved to reach Australia –flight time is nearly three times as much than hopping the Atlantic to Florida. However, if you were considering a long haul location like the USA anyway, it’s not that much more of a leap to go down under. Oz isn’t the kind of place you can hop over to for a few weeks and maintain a second home, so a big chunk of this traffic must be driven by desire to desert the UK and emigrate.

For developers and agents, the surge in Australian interest is a pressing opportunity which may fade unless you can stand out from the crowd now and help people make the shift from dreaming to actively thinking about a move. You need to think about how to help dreamers put some solid foundations in place to make emigration a reality – these first few months of the year are a critical opportunity to take advantage of the new year sentiment.”

Search Data Highlights (download full PDF report)

Top 10 Climbers and Fallers this month (areas with > 100 searches a day)

Top 10 Trending^* Searches this month (areas with > 100 searches a day)

These are the locations showing the most consistent positive performance in searches on Rightmove Overseas.

*Chart Trend is a rolling average of the three previous monthly changes in chart position

You can download the full Rightmoveoverseas Search Report from our blog including Top 40 locations, Top 20 countries and detailed regional breakdowns for the Top 5; Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and the USA.

Editors Notes

This data is complied from searches made by users of www.rightmoveoverseas.co.uk during the period 1^st January to 31^st January 2010. Our website records explicit searches that users make for locations chosen from our map based search, or that are entered into search fields and includes tourist regions we have defined for ease of recognition.

• % Change Searches is the % change in searches on the previous month
• Chart position is absolute and determined by aggregate search volume for that location i.e. all the explicit searches for the location plus any explicit searches for sub-regions of the location e.g. Searches for ‘France’ include searches for ‘Paris’.
• Monthly Chart Change is the difference in chart position on the previous month.
• Quarterly Chart Change is the difference in chart position from 3 months ago.
• Yearly Chart Change is the difference in chart position from 12 months ago.
• Chart Trend is a rolling average of the three previous monthly changes in chart position.

The data in this report does not constitute specific advice, forecast or recommendation and is for general interest only. Readers must perform their own research and seek independent professional advice before making any decision to purchase or invest in property abroad.

About Rightmove Overseas

Rightmove Overseas is part of Rightmove.co.uk, the UK’s number one property website and advertises properties for sale in over 90 countries around the globe from agents, developers and owners. On average, Rightmove Overseas receives 80,000 unique visitors a week and generates over 1,000,000 overseas property searches a month for advertisers. Visit us at www.rightmoveoverseas.co.uk.