American visits to one of Canada’s most popular real estate websites increased this summer as the U.S. presidential election campaign kicked off, according to new data from Royal LePage.
In a Wednesday press release, the real estate firm said that after months of regular traffic, visits to its webpage rose dramatically during the week prior to the campaign’s first debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and then-presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“U.S.-originated sessions to royallepage.ca more than doubled, surging 104 per cent week-over-week (67 per cent year-over-year) in the week of June 16,” the release said.
“The following week, on the heels of the first presidential debate… traffic peaked with an additional four per cent increase in visitors over the week prior. There have been elevated levels of traffic from U.S. visitors ever since.”
July saw the highest number of U.S. visits to the company’s website over the past 12 months, according to the release, and traffic peaked on July 15, the day Trump was officially named the Republican presidential nominee.
Less than a week later, Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who went on to win the Democratic party’s nomination. The race between Trump and Harris ahead of election day on Tuesday remains neck-and-neck, pollsters say.
A spike in U.S.-based activity following major political events isn’t a new phenomenon, according to Royal LePage.
“In 2017, a similar report found U.S. web traffic to royallepage.ca skyrocketed, jumping a massive 329 per cent the day following the 2016 election, and climbing 210 per cent year-over-year the week after Donald Trump’s electoral victory,” the release said.
This summer’s web traffic spike mostly consisted of visitors who live in blue states, where the majority of the population voted for a Democratic candidate in recent elections, according to the release.
“However, since June 2024, the region with the highest number of visitors has consistently been the historically Republican state of South Carolina,” it said.
“From June through September, American interest in Canadian real estate was concentrated in the country’s largest markets, with Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec receiving 70 per cent of all regional pageviews generated by U.S. visitors on royallepage.ca.”
Royal LePage’s president and CEO Phil Soper said in the release that although Americans of all stripes tend to get more curious about Canada’s housing market around election time, it won’t necessarily translate to an influx of homebuyers from south of the border.
“Browsing online listings and moving to another country are two entirely different matters,” he explained.
“Given the rigorous application process and the federal government’s recent decision to reduce immigration targets, only serious and qualified candidates will actually relocate.”