Online listing data and their interaction with market dynamics: evidence from Singapore during COVID-19

With the emergence of Property Technology, online listing data have drawn increasing interest in the field of real estate-related big data research. Scraped from the online platforms for property search and marketing, these data reflect real-time information on housing supply and potential demand before actual transaction data are released. This paper analyzes the interactions between the keywords of online home listings and actual market dynamics. To do so, we link the listing data from the major online platform in Singapore with the universal transaction data of resale public housing. We consider the COVID-19 outbreak as a natural shock that brought a significant change to work modes and mobility and, in turn, consumer preference changes for home purchases. Using the Difference-in-Difference approach, we first find that housing units with a higher floor level and more rooms have experienced a significant increase in transaction prices while close proximity to public transportation and the central business district (CBD) led to a reduction in the price premium after COVID-19. Our text analysis results, using the natural language processing, suggest that the online listing keywords have consistently captured these trends and provide qualitative insights (e.g. view becoming increasingly popular) that could not be uncovered from the conventional database. Relevant keywords reveal trends earlier than transaction-based data, or at least in a timely manner. We demonstrate that big data analytics could effectively be applied to emerging social science research such as online listing research and provide useful information to forecast future market trends and household demand.