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According to an article in today’s New York Times, 2007 marks the year that “CyberMonday” — the promotion initiated in 2005 by online retail trade organization Shop.org to create an online counterpart to the brick-and-mortar “Black Friday” — moves from gimmick to genuine trend.

The phrase “genuine trend” immediately got me thinking about online real estate traffic and the uptrend in traffic at Trulia —something we live and breathe on a daily basis at Trulia. We devote considerable time to assessing targets and metrics for almost everything on the Trulia.com site and how we’re performing relative to our targets. And, like holiday shopping, I’m seeing that there’s a little bit of art, science and luck to the process.

Factoring in just a little over two years of operating experience, we consider various factors that might impact real estate search habits and overall Trulia.com site traffic, taking into account things like:

• Seasonal real estate trends – compare homes for sale relative to Christmas tree sales

• Cyclical real estate trends, macroeconomic factors and other housing data

• General momentum of Trulia’s growth

• New product announcements

• New partnerships

Interestingly, while I doubt that CyberMonday will be the most popular day for online real estate shopping across the web, our own predictive tools are telling us that today could be our most heavily trafficked day ever.

So what is the X factor? Is it delayed demand from people who didn’t have Internet access over the Thanksgiving holiday, or an uptick in consumer interest in real estate after winding down from the big four-day weekend? What other trends do you factor into your real estate forecasting??

In today’s uncertain housing market, forecasting can get pretty tough. I’d love to hear your own thoughts based on previous real estate cycles.

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