New Homes Index: regional re-joining

Fuelled by the unlocking of the market in England from the 16th of the month, NHI web sessions in May increased by an impressive 49%. Goal completions related to the booking of appointments to view rocketed to almost eight times the volume seen in April.

June saw those figures steadily increase, with a traffic growth of 32% month on month. This put us about 5% ahead in terms of the daily average traffic volumes seen back in February. Overall, high intent ‘appointment’ based goals had a further 64% bump compared to May. However, the trend through June into July had been pointing to a slowing of daily averages in both goals and traffic. Web sessions and goals were noticeably buoyed by the Welsh and Scottish markets reopening later in the month.

In England, the two weeks between 22nd June to 5th July were 8% lighter in traffic and down 7% in goals compared to the previous two weeks.

Wales and Scotland

As moving home and viewing properties became allowable activities, the two weeks from 22nd June compared to the previous fortnight saw an 18% increase in web sessions from Scotland and 5% increase from Wales. Users requesting appointments and viewings saw a similar dramatic rise in both countries, mirroring that seen following England’s reopening in mid-May. Scotland’s numbers trebled in the last two weeks, whilst Wales saw over five times the volume of calls.

Google performance

The chart below tracks indexed ‘real estate’ search volume over the last twelve months. Search dipped from the week that lockdown began but there was a significant upturn in May and a continued rise throughout June – at times reaching the peaks seen in the key seasonal search periods of September and January.

Google search CPC and CTR

This channel continues to perform ahead of pre-lockdown activity for property advertisers and provides a good opportunity to reach in-market traffic at a low CPC.

• June CPC £0.42 (-12% MoM) – May CPC £0.52, 21% below April (£0.66) and 42% below March (£0.90)
• June CTR 17.26% (+42% MoM) – May CTR 12.15%, 12% increase from April (10.80%) and 9% from March (11.19%)

Paid social performance

We saw a dramatic fall in CPM on the Facebook platform from the introduction of lockdown and throughout April, however CPMs have been on the rise since the easing of lockdown restrictions, with more competitors returning to the platform. This, coupled with more advertisers changing objective from activation to brand, has resulted in recent CPMs being higher than in March.

CPCs, however, continue to perform under pre-lockdown prices meaning we are still able to generate more traffic for a lower investment.

• June CPM £4.31 (+25% MoM) – May CPM £3.46, 13% increase from April (£3.06) and 5% lower than March (£3.65)
• June CPC £0.45 (+18% MoM) – May CPC £0.38, 3% below April (£0.39) and 32% below March (£0.56)