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Researchers at Redfin, the discount brokerage and listings website, say iBuyers bought 48 percent fewer homes in the last quarter of 2020 than they did a year earlier.
Redfin analyzed MLS and public records data on home purchases and sales made by the most well-known national iBuyers, including RedfinNow (Redfin’s iBuying business), Opendoor, Zillow Offers and Offerpad for the report.
Even as home sales exploded across the United States once states’ initial COVID-19 lockdowns had ended, iBuyers had trouble regaining their pre-pandemic purchase volumes in many metro areas. Even while the services accounted for over 6 percent of homes bought in Phoenix during half of 2018, for example, they represented only 2.1 percent of homes bought in that city in the fourth quarter of 2020, the highest of any metro area Redfin studied.
iBuyers also typically purchased cheaper homes than the median-priced home, Redfin found, whether looking across the country or at the metro areas with the largest share of iBuyer activity.
At the same time, iBuyer-owned homes sold faster – a nationwide median of only 14 days after being listed – which Redfin said was down from 42 days a year earlier and 17 days from the third quarter. That figure was over half the nationwide median for the time a typical home spent on the market.
“Most homes that RedfinNow puts on the market in Los Angeles are selling within the first week and getting multiple offers,” Myron Curry, a senior investment specialist at RedfinNow in the Los Angeles area said in a statement. “This lightning-fast market has been fueled by a shortage of homes for sale and surging demand due to low mortgage rates. Our properties are also renovated and move-in ready, which means the process typically moves quickly.”
Curry blamed the lower volume of iBuyer purchases on the overall inventory shortage in markets across the country.
