Lurking Buyers, Refinancers Drive 60% Traffic Increase

My post last month on “buyers lurking” received a lot of comments, and debate, over whether these lurking buyers are going to translate into increased sales sometime soon.  Since then, President Obama signed the stimulus bill, which includes an $8000 tax credit to first time home buyers who purchase by Dec. 1, 2009.  Also since ...

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My post last month on “buyers lurking” received a lot of comments, and debate, over whether these lurking buyers are going to translate into increased sales sometime soon.  Since then, President Obama signed the stimulus bill, which includes an $8000 tax credit to first time home buyers who purchase by Dec. 1, 2009.  Also since then, Obama announced a housing plan which includes refinancing help for some homeowners and loan modification efforts for homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

What sort of impact has this had on would-be buyers or those that want to refinance?  Clearly, the interest is still there, and in a big way.  February traffic on Zillow reached an all-time high of 7.9 million unique visitors, despite the shorter month.  This is up 60 percent over February 2008.

And as we outline in our press release today, loan requests on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace reached an all-time high as well, with daily loan requests up 142% over the past three months.  Potential borrowers submitted more than 70,000 loan requests since December 1.

The jury is still out on how much of an impact the Obama stimulus bill will have on sales, and whether all of this traffic means buyers are ready to get off the sidelines.  But in these times, a little good news is better than nothing, and at least here at Zillow, February was a great month.  I’m interested to hear reports from the field if February showed any better buyer activity over January?