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In yet another sign the housing market has pulled back from the spring frenzy, the share of bidding wars reported in Greater Boston dropped by nearly 100 basis points between June and July.
Redfin reported that the share of offers written by its area agents which faced at least one competing offer dropped to 63.9 percent in July, down from 73.2 percent in June and 78.4 percent in May. That’s comparable to the 73.3 percent in June 2020 and 62.5 percent in July 2020 that faced competition.
Nationally, 60.1 percent of offers written by Redfin agents faced competition in July, down from 66.5 percent in June and a peak of 74.1 percent in April.
While July’s bidding-war rate was the lowest since January, it was still higher than the 57.9 percent bidding-war rate Redfin saw in July 2020, when the housing market was recovering following a shutdown caused by pandemic restrictions.
Homebuying conditions have been improving this summer following months of fierce competition and soaring prices that were driven by an intensifying housing shortage, the company’s researchers said, a pandemic moving spree made possible by remote work and historically low mortgage rates. Part of the national trend also includes more newly-built homes coming onto the market and the return of some seasonality to buyer demand.
“Competition has started to slow in the last three weeks. We’re now seeing five to eight offers on homes instead of 25, and they’re coming in $5,000 to $10,000 above the listing price instead of $50,000 to $60,000,” Scott Mercer, a Redfin real estate agent in Sacramento, California, said in a statement provided by the company. “Buyers are pushing back. They’ve even started including appraisal contingencies again and making requests for repairs – things that were pretty much unheard of last year.”
July’s most-frenzied markets nationwide were:
- Fort Collins, Colorado (77.3 percent of offers facing competition)
- Orlando, Florida (77 percent)
- Nashville, Tennessee (74.6 percent)
- Honolulu, Hawaii (74.1 percent)
- Colorado Springs, Colorado (73.2 percent)
