In case you missed it over on the corporate blog, Redfin has just launched our Android app!
(And there was much rejoicing.)
Android fans have been very, very vocal about wanting their own Redfin app, and thanks to the hard work of a crack team of engineers, the day has arrived.
Go find out more! Go! Go you crazy kids! Be free!
Photo courtesy Stéfan via Flickr.
I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I spent mine lying on the couch, mewling like a sick kitten, but that’s neither here nor there.
I was a Redfin addict before I was an employee, and sometimes I forget that there’s a lot of stuff on our site that not everybody knows about. Some of these are big things, like the fact that we’re a real live brokerage with real live agents. Others are a bit nittier and grittier, like the sheer number of different ways we try to slice and dice data to share with anyone who wants it.
Example: Our Chicago neighborhoods and zip codes page (or see other nearby cities). This page doesn’t get an awful lot of traffic, but it should, because it’s just obscenely useful. It basically shows you the median list price, median price per square foot, sale-to-list percentage, and number of homes for sale in the entire local area, broken down both by neighborhood name and by zip code.
You can also sort this information by any of the above columns; if you want to see every neighborhood sorted by sale-to-list percentage, just click on that column header and the data will re-sort.
And if you click on any of the neighborhood names or zip codes, we’ll show you another page with information specific to that area, including:
This neighborhood/zip code profile page also gives you trend charts and graphs that you can customize and even import to your own website or blog, links to related forums posts, comparisons with other nearby areas, and profiles of area schools.
If you haven’t seen these pages, you should check them out. And if you’re already using them, you should drop us a line below to let us know what you think of them. Ideas and suggestions are always welcome! (Cruel, cutting remarks are not particularly welcome, but are taken with a stiff upper lip.)
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.
For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – April data is released in June).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Chicago area* as of April:
Only seven of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between March and April (down from eighteen the previous month). The biggest increase was in Washington DC again with a solid 3.0% gain. Other markets that saw increases above 1% were San Francisco (+1.7%), Atlanta (+1.6%), Seattle (+1.6%), Denver (+1.5%), and Cleveland (+1.2%).
Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:
And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:
Chicago’s low tier dragged down the whole index in April. Month to month, the low tier was down 3.8%, the middle tier fell 0.9%, and the high tier increased 0.3%.
Hey all,
So, my original plan was to write a big long post going over every last nook ‘n cranny of our reader poll results in painstaking detail. But then I remembered that I basically have the attention span of a fruit fly.
So instead, I’m just going to post Pretty Bar Graphs of the results, and also give you a link so you can download the full excel version of the responses.
As you can see, Updates on the Local Market was our big big winner, with around 425 votes. Trailing the pack was Profiles of Agents, with four votes.
(…in which our hero discovers which feature types are most popular among readers.)
This one was a bit of a shockeroni for me, because I really thought video was going to dominate here. I mean, you kids love the YouTube and the Hulu and whatnot, right?
But I was wrong, as is often the case. Graphics and Illustrations came in first, and Nope, Just Articles was second, because you people love your precious words. So my next blog post will be a six-thousand-word essay on the impact of the Battle of Hastings on the 2000-2007 Real Estate Bubble. It should be riveting.
Point/Counterpoint was also pretty popular (with one truly awesome person actually suggesting that I team up with Jane Curtin), as was Instant Polls/Surveys.
Not Video, though. Or Contests. Which means I got my legs waxed for nothing.
(…in which our hero runs out of clever subtitles and considers going to the supply closet for a Twix bar.*)
Okay, so this is where I asked about the name of Sweet Digs, because I’ll be honest with you, around the office it’s kind of a running joke. And not the funny kind of running joke, like when Steve Carrell would say “That’s what she said!” on The Office. No, more like the painfully tragic kind of running joke, where you’re laughing from a nauseating mix of nervousness and contempt, like anytime anyone said anything on the entire eight-season run of Full House.
But another surprise, people still like the name Sweet Digs, and the chart above proves it.
So there are all the pretty bar graphs, like I promised. If you’d like to read the full excel details, which includes all the free-form responses (minus identifying, info, of course), just click here to download it.
Whew! Thanks everyone.
*It was delicious.
As part of their neighborhood stabilization program, Fannie Mae is offering buyers’ assistance through a couple of different programs, HomePath and First Look.
HomePath helps buyers buy covering their closing costs, up to 3.5% of the home’s purchase price.
To qualify, buyers must be purchasing a HomePath property; this is a home that is owned by Fannie Mae, usually as the result of a foreclosure or owner forfeiture. Buyers need to make the initial offer on the home on or after June 14, 2011, and the purchase must close by October 31, 2011; initial offers made prior to June 14 are not eligible.
In addition to HomePath program, Fannie Mae also offers an edge to buyers hoping to purchase a primary residence (as opposed to investors, or buyers looking for a second home). Under the First Look program, only offers from primary-residence buyers will be considered during the first 15 days that a Fannie-owned REO property is on the market.
Redfin agents and partner agents are always available to help you make a purchase on a Fannie Mae-owned property.
Hey everyone!
I wanted to say a big fat wet sloppy thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s reader poll. There were nearly 800 of you, and almost everyone had something useful, informative, or enlightening to contribute.
(There was, of course, a small but vocal minority who did nothing but make dirty jokes and request that we start posting illicit photos, but that’s life on the intertubes.)
We got so many responses with so many good suggestions, in fact, that I’m basically drowning over here. I promise I’ll give y’all a nice, thorough run-down of the results, but as for today, I’m going to give you the Xtreme Reader’s Digest version.
Updates on the local market, market statistics, and profiles of local neighborhoods were the top three requests, in that order. Message received. You want more hard data, more often, and more tightly focused on the neighborhood level.
We had a lot of requests for things that are already on Redfin, which tells me that we’re not doing a great job making that stuff easy to find. That’s pretty much my fault.
For instance, tips about home buying was a very popular request, and we have an entire free online guide for home buyers right here. It has a ton of information on the entire home-buying process, much of it tailored to each individual Redfin market.
Readers seem to fall into two camps: people who want more “fluff” (like cool homes, tips on design, stories from agents, etc.) and people who want no fluff at all and think fluff is stupid and would punch me in the face right now if I would just stop saying “fluff.”
I don’t think there’s a way to make every post appeal to everybody, but it does seem like more variety will keep everyone intermittently not-unhappy. And what more could you ask, really?
Finally, a lot of people asked in the free-form comments why we don’t just go back to the old days, when we had lots of different bloggers writing content for every city’s version of Sweet Digs. This was all before my time, but basically it was just too big an operation for us to handle at that point, and we needed to focus more on the core business (which is, of course, panda-cloning.)
We also had the loose-cannon issue crop up a couple times; bloggers saying things in the Redfin name that were completely ridiculous, like that we were cloning pandas.
But moving forward, we do want to distribute the writing work on our blogs out a bit more, both among our agents and (possibly, don’t quote me on this) among non-employees.
How will we approach that? No idea. I’m making this up as I go.
More soon on the survey results, including a downloadable spreadsheet of the results (stripped of any identifying reader info, naturally).
Until then, thanks again, and keep the good ideas coming.
Redfin’s monthly Chicago real estate insider report draws from our proprietary database of information on homes for sale and that just sold, along with insight from our agents to get a sense of what’s going on in the market right now. If you’d like to receive the report via email, just sign up.
Hey There Chicago Redfinnians!
Heading into summer, inventory seems to be rising faster than the temperatures; both month-over-month and year-over-year inventories have increased dramatically. While many buyers are still sitting on the fence, worried about the double-dip in prices shown by the most recent Case-Shiller report, some are viewing the current low prices and interest rates as a signal to dive in head-first.
The chart below shows that inventory is up across the board, both compared to last month and this time last year. And yet, with all those homes out there, buyers are finding themselves in one competitive bidding situation after another. What’s the deal with that?
| County | Compared to April 2011 | Compared to May 2010 |
| Cook County | +8.4% | +7.8% |
| DuPage County | +11.2% | +8.3% |
| Kane County | +9.0% | +13.3% |
| Lake County | +9.7% | +4.1% |
| McHenry County | +9.6% | +6.3% |
| Will County | +11.0% | +10.0% |
Change in # of Houses for Sale on May 31st 2011
While there are plenty of homes on the market, there aren’t enough good homes to go around, and buyers are starting to catch on to this latest mini-trend.
Cindy Hahn, one of Redfin’s Chicago tour coordinators, has noticed buyers picking up the pace: “Clients are displaying a stronger sense of urgency; they want to view their top home picks as soon as possible.”
Patrick Lusk, a Redfin Western Suburb Redfin Agent, concurs: “There has been plenty of talk about multiple offers on good properties. There’s a mad dash to see the good one first.”
So what about the rest of the inventory — the stuff nobody seems to want? Redfin Chicago agent Greg Whelan points out that these homes are stale, and that the fresh, high-quality, well-priced homes are much more limited in numbers.
That’s the story with inventory: lots of homes, but the good ones go fast. Buyers who try to out-wait sellers have seen their plans backfire as other buyers swoop in with better offers. We’re seeing more and more Redfin buyers stepping up to beat the competition to the punch. Does that mean we’re seeing a rise in sales?
In fact, the data does show a lift in transactions. While the market is still well below last year’s sales numbers, May’s transactions are substantially higher than April’s, especially in DuPage and Kane Counties. Also, keep in mind that it’s hard to compare this year’s numbers to May 2010, because last year’s federal home buyer tax credit was still in full swing. There’s no such stimulus in place now.
| County | Compared to April 2011 | Compared to April 2011 Adjusted for # Weekdays | Compared to May 2010 | Compared to May 2010 Adjusted for # Weekdays |
| Cook County | +6.1% | +1.3% | -16.6% | -20.4% |
| DuPage County | +18.9% | +13.5% | -14.9% | -18.8% |
| Kane County | +21.8% | +16.2% | -17.0% | -20.7% |
| Lake County | +8.8% | +3.9% | -6.0% | -10.3% |
| McHenry County | +5.0% | +0.2% | -2.5% | -6.9% |
| Will County | +4.0% | -0.7% | -37.6% | -40.5% |
Change in # of Houses That Sold in May 2011
The overall trend seems to be confirmed by what we’re seeing internally. Redfin Chicago has just had a record run of offer submissions, including 39 offers during the first full week of June (compared to 13 during the comparable week of 2010).
Now, what about prices?
When we look at median price-per-square-foot for May, we see an increase since April.
| County | Median Price in May 2011 |
Median $/SqFt Change since April 2011 |
Median $/SqFt Change since May 2010 |
| Cook County | $160,000 | +0.8% | -13.4% |
| DuPage County | $265,000 | +4.5% | -7.9% |
| Kane County | $160,000 | +5.7% | -15.5% |
| Lake County | $210,000 | +5.6% | -8.1% |
| McHenry County | $169,900 | +3.6% | -14.9% |
| Will County | $175,000 | -2.2% | -14.4% |
Change in Median Price of Houses That Sold in May 2011
At first, this might appear at odds with the May 31st Case-Shiller index, which claimed that prices were down month-over-month. But remember, the Case-Shiller is always two months behind; the May 31st report reflects trends through March 31st. It remains to be seen how the numbers compare on subsequent updates.
That’s our Insider Report for May! Want to know what’s happening in your neighborhood? Download our comprehensive spreadsheet and dig into the data for yourself! Inside you’ll find county, city, and neighborhood information galore. To learn more about how we calculate these numbers, check out our methodology page. You can also liven up the place by posting a comment below.
I’m just going to level with y’all.
It’s one of my performance goals to write one of these blog posts every week, and every week, I approach the goal with a healthy heapin’ spoonful of a little something I like to call dread, or as they call it in German, dredenscheiningruvenshtocken.*
Now at first I thought that this dread was just some sort of performance anxiety, but I had an epiphany yesterday. Okay, maybe epiphany is a little strong. Maybe “duh-moment” would be more accurate.
I have no idea what you guys and gals want to read about. None at all.
But I’m not supposed to admit that, right? I’m supposed to just keep trying different articles and then track your pageviews like I’m some sort of criminal mastermind, then slowly and gradually hit on a winning formula of pure crowd-pleasingness; drawing you in, addicting you to content without you ever even knowing it. Mwa ha ha.
Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work, and really, I’m not the mastermind type. So I thought I’d just ask. Nicely.
So, could I please ask you to take a minute to fill out a little survey I came up with? Please? Pleeeeeease? (It helps if you picture me staring up at you with big puppy-dog eyes. It works especially well if you picture me as an actual puppy.**)
I can’t really promise you any toys or treats or anything, but I can promise that I’ll do my best to give you something worthwhile to read. And then everybody wins.
Thanks all!
*Not real German. Sorry Germany!
**Seriously, can you imagine that? Some cute puppy sitting at a keyboard, typing away with his little paws? That would be adorable!
Imagine you’d bought a home, and one day you went into the attic while chasing after a raccoon and–
What? No. I don’t know why you’re chasing a raccoon. Maybe it stole your sandwich.*
Anyway, you climb into the attic, wrestle the raccoon into submission, reclaim your sandwich, and then look over and see a tire jack holding your roof up. Wouldn’t you be a little upset? Even more so than you were about the sandwich?
This is why we have home inspectors. To inspect homes. For things like tire jacks and raccoon colonies.
You might think that you don’t need an inspector. You might say to yourself: “Self, I know how to tell if there’s something wrong with a house.”
But you’re probably wrong, because:
A: A good home inspector has the training and experience needed to identify hundreds of problems with a home’s structure, foundation, wiring, plumbing, ventilation, roofing, and other key components. Many of these problems are not obvious to the casual (or even business-casual) eye.
-and-
B: Home inspectors go into places like crawlspaces and attics, and spiders live in those places. Spiders.
We talked to over a dozen home inspectors, collected more than 200 images of common home inspection issues, and put that info into a neat little interactive home. It won’t make you a home inspection expert, but it will give you an idea of what to look for when touring a home. And hopefully it’ll help you realize how important a good inspection can be before you buy that home.
Don’t wait for a sandwich-stealing raccoon to show you the value of a home inspector. Check out our Interactive Home Inspection right now.
*It’s a roast beef sandwich. Unless you’re a vegan. Then it’s kelp or hay or something.
(Photo courtesy Gary Cornia & Cornia Consulting, LLC.)
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.
For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – March data is released in May).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Chicago area* as of March:
Eighteen of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between February and March (one less than the previous month). Washington DC saw a 0.9% increase while Seattle eeked out a 0.1% bump.
Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:
And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:
All three of Chicago’s price tiers took a hit in March, but the low tier took a serious whacking. Month to month, the low tier was down 9.9%, the middle tier fell 2.2%, and the high tier decreased 2.0%.
