The median home-sale price increased 17% year over year to an all-time high $341,250, said a new report from tech-powered brokerage Redfin.
Redfin noted that, at this time last year, pandemic stay-at-home orders halted homebuying and selling, which makes year-over-year comparisons unreliable for select housing metrics. As such, Redfin has broken this analysis into two sections: metrics that are acceptable to compare to the same period in 2020, and metrics for which it makes more sense to compare to the same period in 2019.
In comparison to 2020, asking prices reached an all-time of $353,750. Homes that sold during the period were on the market for a median of 23 days, the shortest time on market since 2012. This was 15 days fewer than the same period in 2020. Not surprisingly, 43% of homes sold for more than their list price, an all-time high. This was 17 percentage points higher than the same period a year earlier. Nearly half (46% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within one week of hitting the market, an all-time high.
Compared with 2019, pending home sales were up 22% from the same period two years prior. New listings of homes for sale were down 13% from the same period in 2019. Active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any point during the period) fell 47% from the same period in 2019 to a new all-time low.
“The Easter holiday may have contributed to the latest decline in new listings, as many Americans were spending time with family instead of putting their homes on the market. The overall lack of homes for sale is limiting how much home sales can grow,” said Redfin Lead Economist Taylor Marr. “However, Redfin’s homebuyer demand index is up 4.3% from a month ago, revealing that house hunters are still out in full force. They’re jumping on low mortgage rates, which are sliding back down toward 3%, and bidding up prices of the homes that do hit the market. The good news for buyers is that they should start to see more homes listed now that Easter is behind us.”
