August Home Prices up 18 percent from Last Year; but Drop Slightly from July in Redfin Report

SEATTLE, Sept. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Technology-powered real estate brokerage Redfin (www.redfin.com), today released its Real-Time Home Price Tracker based on August 2013 home prices, sales volume and inventory across 19 major U.S. markets. Prices, sales and the number of homes for sale all saw declines from July to August, indicating an overall softening of the real estate market.

Home prices increased 17.7 percent from last year, but fell 0.4 percent from July. This is the first month-over-month drop in home prices in six months. Meanwhile, as Redfin forecasted in last month's report, sales volume was down, declining 4.3 percent from July. This is in contrast to a month-over-month sales volume increase in August in 2011 and 2012. Sales volume was still up 6.2 percent over last year. Inventory declined for the second straight month, with the number of homes for sale down 2.6 percent since July, and 18.2 percent since August 2012.­

This report is the earliest monthly analysis of home prices, sales and inventory across 19 U.S. markets, published weeks before any other index, based on the local databases used directly by Realtors to list properties and record sales. Click the following link to read the complete Redfin Real-Time Home Price Tracker: http://www.redfin.com/research/reports/real-time-price-tracker

Market-Specific Highlights and Lowlights:

Home Prices

• 14 of the 19 cities measured saw home prices flatten out, or decline year over year; 5 saw month-over-month home price increases.
• Las Vegas led the price gains with a 38% year-over-year increase.

Sales Volume

• Chicago saw the biggest gains, with home sales up 24.9% from August 2012.
• Ventura's sales volumes took the hardest hit with a 13% drop from a year earlier.

Inventory

• Inventory came in at 292,779 total listings across the 19 metro areas studied.
• The top five markets with the largest year-over-year drop in inventory were Las Vegas (-47.5%), Boston (-31.2%), Chicago (-30.2%), Austin (-22.8%), and Portland (-21.1%).
• The only markets with an increase in homes for sale were Phoenix which saw a 2.2% rise in inventory year over year, and Sacramento which saw a 2.1% rise year over year.

About the Real-Time Home Price Tracker
Redfin's monthly report on home prices, inventory levels and sales volume is an up-to-date, accurate portrait of the U.S. real estate market, coming weeks or months ahead of other market reports. As a broker with access to dozens of Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) used by real estate agents to list properties and record sales, Redfin gets data within minutes of a sale, pending sale or listing activation, well before any government, media or analytics organization. Full data may be downloaded in a spreadsheet.

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 blog.redfin.com, on Twitter @Redfin, and Facebook.com/Redfin.

SOURCE Redfin