Orange County, San Francisco and San Diego, the Most Competitive Real Estate Markets in the Country Show Early Signs of Cooling While Seattle, Baltimore and Chicago Continue to Heat Up
Real Estate Broker Redfin Issues New Report Analyzing Bidding Wars and what it Takes to Win
SEATTLE, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Redfin (www.redfin.com), the technology-powered brokerage, today released its latest real estate industry analysis, the Redfin Bidding War Report. The report is based on Redfin's Offer Insights, statistics compiled from 2,000 offers written by Redfin agents in April of this year. Redfin uses this proprietary data to rank its most competitive real estate markets based on the percentage of offers written by Redfin agents that faced competition from other homebuyers.
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The report's findings include:
- In April, 73% of Redfin offers went into bidding wars, the lowest rate of competition the company has seen this year, down from the peak in February, when 79% of offers faced competition. The easing competitiveness suggests that certain markets, particularly in California, Washington, DC, and Boston, are showing early signs of cooling.
- The top four most competitive markets were all in California: Orange County ranked most competitive with 93.6% of the offers Redfin agents wrote facing competition, followed by San Francisco (90.8%), San Diego (86.9%), and Los Angeles (86.2%).
- Seattle, Baltimore and Chicago saw competition intensify from March to April, with bidding-war rates climbing 2.1, 3.9, and 1.2 percentage points, respectively.
- The most common components of Redfin's clients' winning offers were a conventional loan (61.7%), a higher-than-asking offer price (51.9%), and a personal cover letter, written by the buyer to the seller (28.0%).
- Among winning offers in San Francisco, 91.5% were higher than the seller's asking price, with the average winning offer coming in 7.8% higher than asking price. For example, to win a home listed at $950,000 (San Francisco's median asking price), a homebuyer should start their bid around $1,024,000.
The table below ranks the hottest real estate markets in order of competitiveness.
| Competitiveness Ranking |
Market |
Percent of Offers that Faced Competition, April 2013 |
Percent of Offers that Faced Competition, March 2013 |
Percent of Offers that Faced Competition, April 2012 |
Percent of Winning Offers that Were Over Asking Price, April 2013 |
Average Difference Between Offer Price & Asking Price on Winning Offers, April 2013 |
| #1 |
93.6% |
93.7% |
88.9% |
45.2% |
-0.7% |
|
| #2 |
90.8% |
91.6% |
88.9% |
91.5% |
7.8% |
|
| #3 |
86.9% |
88.3% |
62.5% |
39.4% |
-0.8% |
|
| #4 |
86.2% |
88.2% |
70.5% |
34.1% |
-0.2% |
|
| #5 |
74.6% |
72.5% |
68.0% |
67.9% |
2.4% |
|
| #6 |
69.4% |
75.2% |
62.1% |
43.1% |
0.3% |
|
| #7 |
69.2% |
72.4% |
70.0% |
64.3% |
1.5% |
|
| #8 |
58.1% |
54.2% |
50.0% |
23.5% |
-0.6% |
|
| #9 |
51.2% |
49.0% |
47.4% |
20.0% |
-4.3% |
|
| National (across 21 major metro markets) |
73.2% |
74.3% |
70.3% |
51.9% |
1.2% |
To read the full report on Redfin's blog, complete with accounts of real bidding wars from Redfin agents, click the following link. http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2013/05/bidding-war-report-2013-05.html.
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 21 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
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