As the housing market continues to slow down, new data from Redfin indicates that housing market competition is following suit.
According to the company, only 16% of offers written by Redfin agents faced a bidding war in the first three weeks of March. This is a drastic drop from 61% in the first three weeks of March 2018.
That being said, this rate is still a moderate increase from 12% during December 2018.
“This year even when there is competition among buyers for the same house, prices aren’t bid up as high as they were last summer,” Redfin agent Katie Gilbert said. “Overall it’s not as chaotic as last year, but buyers still need to move quickly to win homes in the popular areas.”
And Gilbert is right, competition is easing across the country.
In fact, although San Francisco, Boston, San Diego and Portland are March’s most competitive housing markets, bidding wars in these metros have fallen short.
According to the company’s analysis, on average, only one in five homebuyers in these areas participated in a bidding war.
This is a stark contrast as each of these markets saw over 65% of offers face steep competition during the same period in 2018.
Notably, these typically hot markets aren’t the only ones cooling off, as Redfin notes that Seattle is also feeling the cold.
“Even Seattle— a bidding-war hotbed in 2018—still hasn’t seen competition heat up just yet in 2019,” Redfin writes. “Seattle’s rate was 17% so far this month, down from 72% a year ago.”
The image bellow shows how bidding wars have varied since 2011:
(Click to enlarge)
