Australia and New Zealand buck the seasonal slow down

Highlights

•  44% of indexed locations saw increases in searches, 46% decreases, 10% no changes
• Australia and New Zealand improving their market share by 34% and 24% respectively
• Led by Florida, US interest declined in September, down 27% on August
• Mugla, Turkey top trending destination climbing average 10 places a month

Commentary

As the Summer peaks in searches begin to fade into Autumn and activity begins to cool, we’ve seen some big swings for USA, Australia and New Zealand on our search charts. Of the top 20 countries, Australia and New Zealand were the only destinations on Rightmove Overseas to increase search activity in September. The US on the other hand, dropped nearly 27% over the same period.

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

“The drop in US searches was mostly driven by big reductions in searches for property in Florida, which is surprising given the extremely keen pricing available there and it’s long term popularity as a destination for Brits. Possibly some of the less motivated buyers have started hanging up their dreams till next year, leaving the committed lifestyle buyers still searching the destinations on the Northern Eastern Seaboard, where New Jersey actually increased searches by 21%.

Of the top 5 countries, Murcia and Costa de Almeria in Spain are holding up the best against the cooling in search activity, dropping only around 6% against the Spanish average drop of 16%. In Italy, of the major destinations, it’s Calabria and Puglia standing out and in France, the Midi-Pyrénées region actually managed an 8% increase against the average French decline of 18%.

The lift in searches for homes down under could well be seasonal as thoughts turn to a new life in the New Year and emigration; the emigration zones at the recent A Place in The Sun show were extremely popular.”

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

Download the full Rightmove Overseas Search Report
including Top 40 locations, Top 20 countries and regional breakdowns for 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 September to 30^th September 2009. 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. This month 50,809 locations have received searches.

• % 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.