Homebuyer Demand in May Softens with Tours Down 3%, Offers Down 2% in Redfin Real-Time Demand Pulse

SEATTLE, June 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Redfin (www.redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage, today issued its Real-Time Demand Pulse, the only report in the industry that analyzes home tour and offer data. The report showed:

• In May, the number of customers touring homes fell 3.0% from April, compared to a 2.2% loss between April and May in 2012.
• Home offers decreased 2.1% from April to May, a slightly larger decline than last year's 1.1% drop.
• During the last week of May, tours were down 0.9% week over week, compared to a 1.9% week-over-week increase during the same period last year.
• Week-over-week offers in May declined 24.1%, compared to a 30.4% drop last year, the only metric in this report that improved. The double-digit drops are expected from week three to four in May because of lighter activity over Memorial Day Weekend.

The fact that homebuyer demand decreased slightly in May, despite there being more homes to buy could be explained by one or more of the following factors:

• The slight uptick in mortgage rates, especially in the last week of the month,
• Rising home prices,
• Buyer fatigue in a seller's market, or
• The start of summer vacation, which causes many homebuyers to focus their attention elsewhere.

In any case, this decline in activity points toward a slight softening of sales volumes in June and July.

To access the full report on Redfin's blog, click or paste the following link. http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2013/06/real-time-demand-pulse-may-2013.html

About this Report
The Redfin Real-Time Demand Pulse is a monthly analysis of thousands of customers touring homes and signing offers in twenty markets across the United States. Redfin is the only major real estate broker storing data in one location about its agent tours and offers, enabling the company to project sales volume for the U.S. without waiting 30 – 45 days for sales to close, or an additional 15 – 30 days for them to be recorded as public record.

About Redfin
Redfin (www.redfin.com) is a technology-powered real estate broker that represents people buying and selling homes. Founded and run by technologists, Redfin has a team of experienced, full-service real estate agents who are advocates, not sales-people, earning customer-satisfaction bonuses, not commissions. Redfin's online tools feature all the broker-listed homes for sale, as well as for-sale-by-owner properties that don't pay brokers a commission. The company serves 22 U.S. markets and has closed more than $8 billion in home sales. In 2012, Redfin was named one of The DIGITAL 100: World's Most Valuable Private Tech Companies by Business Insider. Follow us on our blog (blog.redfin.com), Twitter (@redfin), and Facebook (facebook.com/redfin), Redfin Collections (www.redfin.com/collections), and on our mobile apps (www.redfin.com/mobile). 

SOURCE Redfin Corporation