March Home Prices Up 15%, Home-Selling Velocity Continues to Climb in Redfin Real-Time Home Price Tracker

SEATTLE, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Technology-powered real estate broker Redfin (www.redfin.com) today released its Real-Time Home Price Tracker for March 2013, showing home prices increasing 15 percent year over year across 19 major U.S. markets. Inventory continued its downward trajectory, falling by 31 percent from March 2012, and was flat from February. Meanwhile, home-selling velocity reached the highest point on record with 34.8 percent of homes going under contract within 14 days of their debut. Here are the key metrics:

Home prices up:

• Home prices were up 15% year over year and up 6% from February.

Home-selling velocity increasing:

• The percentage of listings going under contract within 14 days of their debut reached the highest point on record at 34.8%, up slightly from February (33.2%).

Inventory mixed:

• Inventory fell 31% from last year, and was flat (-0.1%) from February.

Home sales on the rise:

• Closed sales were up by 25% from February, but rose just 0.9% from last year.

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://blog.redfin.com/blog/2013/04/real-time-price-tracker-march-2013.html

Market-Specific Highlights and Lowlights:

Sales Volumes

• Denver again saw the biggest gains, with home sales up 35.4% from March 2012.
• Las Vegas' sales volumes took the hardest hit with a 19.4% drop from a year earlier.

Home Prices

• All but one (Long Island) of the 19 cities measured saw home prices rise both year over year and month over month.
• San Francisco led the price gains with a 31.7% year over year increase.

Inventory

• Inventory came in at 158,194 total listings across the 19 metro areas studied, an increase of fewer than 200 homes since February.
• The top five markets with the largest year-over-year drop in inventory were all in California: Sacramento (-66.4%), Los Angeles (-56.4%), San Francisco (-55.6%), Ventura (-52.7%) and Inland Empire (-51.9%).
• Boston held sixth place with a year-over-year inventory drop of -50.4%.
• Phoenix was again the only market that saw an increase in homes for sale, with a 5.5% rise in inventory year over year.

Selling Velocity

• The top four fastest-selling markets (% of homes selling in two weeks or less) were all in California: San Jose (64%), San Francisco (60%), Los Angeles (52.4%) and Ventura (52%); Denver held fifth place at 51.6%.
• Boston was again the slowest-selling market, with only 3.3% of homes selling in 14 days or less.

About the Real-Time Home Price Tracker
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. Using MLS fields, Redfin is able to distinguish houses from condominiums and townhouses, which often sell for less money. To validate the accuracy of the data and to account for sales not handled by a real estate agent, Redfin compares MLS data with county records as they become available, using sophisticated algorithms to identify and resolve disparities about square footage or price for each address. Data at the local and neighborhood level are available in a spreadsheet, and the report methodology is available as an Adobe document.

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. Because Redfin is a brokerage and a member of the multiple listing services (MLSs) in each market it serves, Redfin's website and mobile apps show all the agent-listed homes for sale, and does not show any homes as active that are already off the market. 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).

SOURCE Redfin