In looking at a year’s worth of housing data, research firm Hitwise compared details provided by the National Association of Realtors with its data on US online searches for the term, “houses for sale.”

That is the highest volume non-branded search term relating to real estate, Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins said in the post about the comparison. When comparing it to Hitwise information on queries, she found a near-perfect match with the two trends, as shown in this image provided by the firm (click for larger version):

“I ran a correlation analysis and found a very strong (.92) correlation between the median house price and the monthly share of US Internet searches. This is about as close to a perfect correlation as I’ve seen,” said Hopkins.

She believes the correlation won’t be as strong in looking back farther than one year of queries and real estate data. April’s movement of the two activities should be flat, Hopkins said, as the downward trend may be at an end. That of course does not mean a recovery is at hand, unfortunately.

Relief for Craigslist came from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed that the site should not be liable for posts made by certain users who included language contrary to federal fair housing laws.

Classified Intelligence cited the court ruling that sided with Craigslist and its contention that common carrier laws applied in the case:

"Using the remarkably candid postings on Craigslist, the Lawyers’ Committee can identify many targets to investigate. It can dispatch testers and collect damages from any landlord or owner who engages in discrimination. …. It can assemble a list of names to send to the Attorney General for prosecution. But … it cannot sue the messenger just because the message reveals a third-party’s plan to engage in unlawful discrimination."

When the lawsuit had been dismissed by the US District Court in Chicago in November 2006, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster wrote the plaintiffs sued the site over "100 allegedly discriminatory ads posted by our Chicago users in a 6 month period, out of 200,000 housing ads submitted to chicago.craigslist.org in that timeframe."

"Discriminatory postings are exceedingly uncommon, and those few that do reach the site are typically removed quickly by our users through the flagging system that accompanies each ad ," Buckmaster said in 2006.