A record high of 50 percent of homes have recently sold for above their list price, according to a new report from real estate brokerage Redfin.
The report analyzed 400 U.S. metro areas during the 4-week period ending May 16, marking an increase of 23 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.
However, it’s important to note that at this time last year, pandemic stay-at-home orders halted home buying and selling, which makes year-over-year comparisons unreliable for select housing metrics. As such, Redfin broke down the report into two sections: metrics for which a year-over-year comparison remains most relevant, and metrics for which it makes more sense to compare to the same period in 2019. See more below.
Metrics to compare to 2020:
- Home prices hit a record high of $352,975 and were up 24% year over year, also a record. Asking prices increased to $358,975, also a record high.
- A record high of 50% of homes sold for more than their list price, up 23 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.
- A record-high 101.7% average sale-to-list price ratio, which measures how close homes are selling to their asking prices, up 3.2 percentage points year over year. This means that the average home sold for 1.7% more than its asking price.
- A record low of just 17 days on market for homes that sold during the period, down 18 days from the same period in 2020.
- A record-high 58% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market.
- 45% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within one week of hitting the market, down just slightly from the record high in the four-week period ending May 9.
Metrics to compare to 2019:
- Pending home sales were up 22% from the same period in 2019.
- New listings of homes for sale were down 12% from the same period in 2019. Compared to the four-week period ending April 18, new listings were up 3%, compared to a 7% increase during the same period in 2019.
- Active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any point during the period) fell 49% from the same period in 2019.
Read the full report here.
