26 May 2009

Source: Yahoo business

The New Zealand real estate industry website is attracting increased international traffic, indicating a potential influx of overseas jobseekers, its administrators say.

In the year to April, their website had a 14 percent increase in overseas viewers looking at the houses for sale section, recording 134,604 hits last month.

International traffic to the site’s rental property section increased 17 percent in the year to April, to 25,902 hits for the month.

The increase in international visitors looking at properties suggested “an unprecedented number of people” were thinking about migrating to escape economic troubles in their home countries, the site’s chief executive, Alistair Helm, said.

The biggest increase in browsers came from Spain, with visitors there increasing by 226 percent compared with last April. Chinese browsers rose 211 percent, followed by visitors from the Russian Federation, up 157 percent.

People from Spain also made up the most increased group looking at rental properties, increasing 248 percent, followed by Irish browsers, at 172, then Russians, up 132 percent.

Those countries had been hit hard affected by the recent international economic turmoil, which encouraged people to look for better opportunities overseas, Mr Helm said.

The influx suggested to him New Zealand had at least been shortlisted by international job seekers .

“Spain’s unemployment rate doubled over the 12 months to March, hitting an all-time high of 17.4 percent. Ireland’s once-booming economy has crashed, the slump in oil prices has hit Russia particularly hard and Singapore’s economy shrank 19.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009. China and Taiwan have also been hit hard by the slow-down in global economic activity.”