Online housing search dataset: Information flows of real estate platform users
Description
The information flow data are generated from user-generated data of Funda.nl, the largest online housing market platform of the Netherlands. The datasets contain the inflow and outflow of hits (mouse clicks, opening of webpages, etc.) from one municipality to another, where the municipality of the user defines the origin and the municipality of the property that is viewed defines the destination. The data capture real behavior of the platform users. The flow data are based on 1.1 billion hits that are made by the users of the website in the first six months of 2018. The underlying data are collected by Google Analytics, Google's web analytics service. Funda uses these data for statistics to gain insights in the platform's usage, to maintain platform stability, and for product development. These proprietary data of Funda are used to generate the information flows between municipalities. In the full sample we have 148,216 information flows between municipalities in the Netherlands, among which 313 zero flows. The data include subsamples for different types of platform users as user search intentions range from serious to fully recreational. The data enable researchers to analyse housing search behavior from a novel perspective. The data are, for instance, relevant for housing market researchers, digital economists, and economic geographers.