How useful is listings data for research?

Compared to other asset classes, information on transactions of residen-tial real estate is scarce and available only with delay. Listing informa-tion from web-platforms is abundant and timely. Is listings data usefulfor research? We examine this question and nd that distributions ofask and sale prices di er signi cantly, both because of characteristicscomposition and implicit pricing. Estimates of the average willingnessto pay from ask data can be widely o when compared with estimatesfrom sale data. Ask data is also not useful to predict prices of individualhouses and su er from large error variances. Quality-controlled ask andsale price indices show similar trends and we nd that an ask price indexcan be used for nowcasting. Overall, our analysis shows that ask datahas limited potential for research, and is no substitute for sale data.