If you wanted a rough-and-ready way to calculate investor interest in real estate in different countries, type a commonly used search term into a tracking service. Then repeat, using the same search term, for comparison countries. What you are looking for is not the absolute number of searches (something, incidentally, that can be hard to find) but the relative results between counties. Have a look at the graph below for countries in Central America for searches made in November 2006

Costa Rica tops the bill for November. This is not altogether surprising. Costa Rica is the most established market in the region, has the largest number of US citizens as residents, and has been a popular real estate destination for many years. Panama and Belize rack up the second and third spots for Internet searches followed by Nicaragua in fourth position.

It is impossible to know exactly how this translates into investor confidence or relative real estate sales volumes for the different countries. Data on sales volumes and prices is not maintained centrally so we cannot make definite correlations. However, one thing is certain, investor interest in information on real estate (at least over the Internet) is highest for the more mature real estate destinations.

Going forward, we plan to conduct a trend search focused on conversations, tags and posts made in blogs. But we want to wait until there are enough blogs covering real estate in Central America to make the results meaningful. Looking at the explosion of new blogs worldwide this may be quite soon.

2009 update: Review key ‘online real estate buzz’ indicators for Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.