Where search demand outruns listed supply, does that pressure show up in prices later? This exhibit tests it directly. Housing-market tightness is the ratio of search demand to listed supply in a travel-to-work area; the question is whether tightness this year foretells price growth in years to come, and whether the relationship could just as well run the other way.
The first view estimates the effect of current tightness on price growth at several horizons, with area and year fixed effects across 2010 to 2025. The effect is positive and excludes zero one and two years ahead, and it is larger at the longer horizon, so tightness leads prices by one to two years; the reverse regression is not significant, so the lead runs from search to prices rather than the other way. The second view is an out-of-sample test: it asks whether adding the tightness signal to a simple forecast lowers the error, year by year. It helps most in the turbulent pandemic years when prices turned, which is where an early-warning signal is worth the most. The estimates pool sale and rent and are strongest at local-authority scale; England is the reliable canvas.