Redfin Reveals Housing Market Results for 4-Week Period ending January 10

Redfin had quite the year. After halting and then restarting its iBuying service, Redfin Now, the property portal has announced that its median home sale price has increased 14% year-over-year, pending home sales are up 35% year-over-year, and bidding wars on its auction feature is staying steady. 

Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather, comments:

"Buyers are likely disappointed by the lack of new homes listed in the past month. But that's not stopping them from making offers on what is on the market, which is sending pending sales up. It's looking like 2021 will see a housing market frenzy that will rival what we experienced in 2020."

When it comes to Redfin’s auction services, across the country, 49.7% of home offers listed by Redfin agents were bid on in December, whereas year-over-year, that number was 55.9%. 

Fairweather explains:

"The housing market is unseasonably hot—it's behaving like it normally does in the spring, with plenty of demand from homebuyers.

"Typically, the vast majority of homes for sale in December are homes that have been sitting on the market because they're overpriced or there's a problem with the property. This December, with so many Americans moving, scores of desirable homes hit the market—but not enough to satisfy insatiable demand from homebuyers. The result? Fierce bidding wars."

Key highlights pertaining to the housing market across 400+ U.S. metro areas during the 4-week period ending January 10 include:

• Pending home sales were up 35% year over year.
• New listings of homes for sale were down 3% from a year earlier—the first decline since July.
• Active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any point during the period) fell 33% from 2020 to a new all-time low.
• 38% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market, well above the 27% rate during the same period a year ago.
• The average sale-to-list price ratio, which measures how close homes are selling to their asking prices, declined slightly to 99.3%—still 1.5 percentage points higher than a year earlier.