Luxury Home Sales Hit Six-Year High in First Quarter with Sales of $1 Million-Plus Homes Up 36 Percent from Last Year

SEATTLE, May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Redfin (www.redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate broker, today released an analysis of luxury home sales across 22 U.S. markets. The report tracks the number of homes sold for $1 million or more from 2008 to 2013 and shows the most luxurious zip code in each market.  

While the U.S. housing market has shown clear signs of recovery in the last year, the market for homes priced at $1 million and above has rebounded at an even faster rate.  From the first quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013, sales of these homes increased 34 percent, compared to an increase of just 5 percent for the market as a whole over the same period. The wide gap in sales volume is likely due to the fact that owners of luxury homes are more likely to have the financial means to sell at little or no profit than other homeowners.

No matter what price range homebuyers are shopping in, they are still likely to face competition. Last month, 73 percent of offers Redfin agents wrote went into bidding wars.  

"The Orange County luxury market is extremely competitive right now," explains Redfin Agent Jennifer Chen. "It's a seller's market, and buyers are finding it necessary to put a lot of money down, waive contingencies, and include rent backs if they want to maximize their chances of getting the home they want."

Below is a list of the 22 markets included in this report, rank-ordered by the number of $1 million-plus homes sold from January 2012 through March 2013. Also included in the table is the zip code and corresponding neighborhoods within each market with the most $1 million-plus home sales during the same period.

To read the full report on Redfin's blog, which includes map visualizations of the zip codes with the most luxury home sales across 22 markets, click the following link. http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2013/05/luxury-home-sales-hit-6-year-high.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