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Redfin’s monthly report on demand for home sales in the country’s biggest metro areas found the prevalence of multiple offers on residential properties stayed steady into December, a month that typically saw a significant drop-off in buyer interest pre-pandemic.
The online brokerage measured the share of offers its agents wrote in Greater Boston that met with at least one competing offer in December of last year, and compared it with the same figure from the same month last year and with November 2021.
In December, 64.5 percent of the offers Redfin agents wrote in Boston met with competition, compared to 65 percent in November. That’s significantly elevated from December 2020, when only 49.9 percent of such offers met with competition, Redfin said. A January 2020 Redfin report found only 13 percent of offers its agents wrote in December 2019 met with competition, compared to 18.3 percent in November 2019 and 13.5 percent in December 2018.
Nationally, Salt Lake City had the highest bidding-war rate of the 37 U.S. metropolitan areas in this analysis, with 74 percent of offers written by Redfin agents facing competition in December. Next came Tucson, Arizona at 73.1 percent and San Diego at 71.1 percent. Virginia Beach, Virginia and Seattle rounded out the top five, with bidding-war rates of 70.6 percent and 70 percent, respectively. Boston ranked 13th.
Across the country, pricier homes attracted more offers. Nearly two-thirds of offers for homes priced between $800,000 and $1 million faced bidding wars in December, according to the Redfin report, the highest share of any component of the market. Next came homes in the $1 million to $1.5 million range (62 percent), followed by homes priced over $1.5 million (61.7 percent). One explanation, the Redfin report suggests, could be the steady demand for vacation homes.
More than 55 percent of offers for homes priced between $200,000 and $800,000 faced multiple offers, Redfin said. Townhouses were the most competitive property type, with 62 percent of offers facing competition, followed by single-family homes, at 61.3 percent and condominiums at 53.3 percent, which Redfin’s researchers blamed on buyers priced out of single-family homes moving their buying focus to typically-cheaper townhouses.
