Inventory Shortage and Rising Prices Intensify Buyer Frustration - Redfin Real Estate News

Inventory Shortage and Rising Prices Intensify Buyer Frustration

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Updated on October 6th, 2020

For the latest Redfin Real-Time Home-Buyer Tracker, we surveyed more than 1,100 active home-buyers who have recently toured homes with Redfin, in order to get their pulse on the market. With inventory at record lows across the country and home prices on the rise in almost every market, buyer frustration shot through the roof this quarter.
Home-buyers surveyed by Redfin are:

  • Anticipating continued price increases: Seventy-nine percent of buyers who responded to our survey now believe that home prices will increase in their neighborhood in the next twelve months, up from 71% last quarter. Meanwhile, the share of buyers who believe prices will rise “a lot” shot up from just 10% last quarter to 22% in the first quarter.
  • Now believe it is a better time to sell than it is to buy: Just 40% of buyers believe now is a good time to buy in their neighborhood, while 48% believe it is a good time to sell. Last quarter the results were flipped: 48% believed it was a good time to buy, while just 27% believed it was a good time to sell.
  • Are most concerned by low inventory and rising prices: Sixty-six percent of buyers listed low inventory as a major concern in the first quarter, up from 59% in the fourth quarter. Forty percent listed rising prices as a concern, up from 33% last quarter.
  • Driven into the market by rising prices: Low interest rates was still the top response (58%) when we asked buyers why they plan to buy now, but rising prices shot up from 33% in the fourth quarter to 40% in the first quarter.

For the full report including data tables and charts, visit the Real-Time Market Sentiment in Redfin’s Research Center.

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Tim Ellis

Tim Ellis has been analyzing the real estate market since 2005, and worked at Redfin as a housing market analyst from 2010 through 2013 and again starting in 2018. In his free time, he runs the independently-operated Seattle-area real estate website Seattle Bubble, and produces the "Dispatches from the Multiverse" improvised comedy sci-fi podcast.

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