no30-35

[30] Measuring latent housing preference during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Analysis of inquiry volume for newly-built and existing houses in the Tokyo metropolitan area

○Masatomo Suzuki¹, Yuta Arai², Chihiro Shimizu³ (1. Center for Real Estate Innovation, The University of Tokyo, 2. Recruit Sumai Company Ltd., 3. Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo)

Keywords:COVID-19, housing preference, housing market, alternative data

Employing a novel dataset on weekly “inquiry volume” indicator from the online real estate web portal, this paper investigates the intensity and direction of housing search during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Tokyo metropolitan area. We first show that housing search intensity temporarily increases following the emergency declaration, which forces us to “stay home”. We then show that properties in areas far away from central Tokyo, properties with poor accessibility to station, and spacious properties exhibit an increase in search intensity. We also show that, in areas far away from central Tokyo, properties that are close to beach and/or forest exhibit an increase in search intensity. The results imply that the housing search activity timely tells us changing housing preferences from the stay home experience.