If ShowingTime’s monthly index is any indication, the spring market is poised to take off early this year. The home showing management, scheduling and market statistics software company regularly tracks the average number of appointments that are scheduled on active listings on its software during any given month.

This January marked a 20.2% overall year-over-year increase in national showing traffic, marking the sixth consecutive month of growth nationwide. However, ShowingTime Chief Analytics Officer Daniil Cherkasskiy stressed that “January 2019 was somewhat subdued due to extreme weather conditions in parts of the country at the time, reflecting an exaggerated year-over-year growth for January 2020.”

In the bustling Northeast, ShowingTime recorded 20.6% year-over-year growth in the showing index, resulting in a reading of 168.2 for January. This regional index is the highest in the nation, beating out the national average of 153.4. By comparison, December had a index reading of 99.9, marking an all-year low for 2019. When looking at year-over-year growth, starting in January 2018 the index was recorded at 143.1 with 3.5% growth from the previous year. Then in 2019, the index decreased 2.5% to 139.5. The Northeast has shown consistent increases in the number of showings for the last nine months and is poised to continue this trend.

The way that ShowingTime compiles this data is by comparing current activity “relative to [an] initial index value set to 100 for January 2014.” While the time period of comparison is still relatively small, Cherkasskiy said the current data still reflects record levels of showings for listings, which he optimistically interpreted to mean that “the housing market will be quite competitive this spring.”