We’re kicking off a new series on Seattle Sweet Digs called Redfin By The Numbers. In this series, we’ll take a look at our brokerage stats to see how what our clients are doing right now reflects what’s happening in the market.
The information in these posts comes from the NWMLS, the database for real estate transactions and listings for western Washington state, as well as our own database and surveys of Redfin customers.
Let’s look at Redfin’s March numbers from the Seattle area.
We Have The Top Three Agents In King County
According to the NWMLS, Redfin agents Febe Cude, Trevor Smith and Rachelle King are tops among agents who represented home-buyers in King County for March based first on number of deals, then by total dollar amount. All six of our Seattle agents rank in the top sixteen for King County.
| Rank | Agent | # of Deals | Total Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Febe Cude | 8 | $4,744,700 |
| 2 | Trevor Smith | 5 | $2,558,100 |
| 3 | Rachelle King | 4 | $1,411,450 |
| 8 | Loren Ellingson | 3 | $1,727,500 |
| 15 | Allie Howard | 3 | $1,240,000 |
| 16 | Cheryl McLaine | 3 | $1,039,235 |
Redfin’s agents are experts on what’s going on in the Seattle real estate market right now. They’re active in the market and successfully closing deals.
Those numbers are just for King County. To see how busy our agents were in March, let’s look at their closed deals from other counties:
| Agent | County | # of Deals | Total Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allie Howard | Snohomish | 3 | $1,048,000 |
| Cheryl McLaine | Snohomish | 2 | $821,310 |
| Febe Cude | Snohomish | 1 | $430,000 |
| Loren Ellingson | Kitsap | 1 | $435,000 |
| Trevor Smith | Pierce | 1 | $245,000 |
Our Clients Love Our Fanatical Service
We survey every client and track every transaction in a central customer database. For the surveys we received in March from our Seattle-area clients:
- 35 clients responded to our customer-satisfaction survey and posted a review online, up from 27 in February.
- 33 of those clients, or 94%, would recommend Redfin to a friend, down from 100% in February.
- 1 of our clients gave Redfin a five-star review on Yelp.
In these surveys, Redfin asks customers to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Redfin to a friend on a 0-to-10 scale. Customers who rated 6 or higher count as people who would recommend Redfin to a friend.
More People Are Looking At Foreclosed Properties
In March, our Seattle clients were busy seeing homes and making offers:
- Redfin clients in Seattle toured 914 homes in March, a 32% increase from the 692 homes toured in February.
- Our clients made 63 signed offers on homes, up from 37* in February.
o Febe Cude: 16 offers
o Cheryl McLaine: 11 offers
o Trevor Smith:11 offers
o Rachelle King: 9 offers
o Loren Ellingson: 8 offers
o Allie Howard: 8 offers - 10 of these offers, or 16%, were on bank-owned foreclosures, up from 8% in February.
This jump in offers on foreclosures is due in part to how banks are pricing their foreclosure properties.
“More and more buyers are making offers on foreclosures because that’s where they’re finding good deals,” says Redfin Seattle agent Trevor Smith who worked on four offers on foreclosures in March. “Banks aren’t messing around any more with foreclosures. They’re aggressively pricing the homes so they’ll sell quickly and get them off their books.”
*In the previous post with the February numbers, we reported the number of unsigned offers we received from Redfin clients. Starting with this post, we’re tracking the number of signed offers our clients submitted to listing agents.
We also had a huge turnout for our home-buying class in March. More than 85 people came to our Seattle HQ to learn about the home-buying process and to meet our agents. There were a lot of questions about the first-time home-buyer tax credit and how to look for a deal. Check out the slide deck from that class. You can see what Justin and Ryan Twittered about the class.
It’s Taking A Week Longer To Close On A Home
In March, it took a lot longer for our Seattle clients to close on their homes:
- For our clients who bought re-sales, the average time from the initial agreement on terms until the close of the deal was 38 days, a 25% increase from February’s 31 days.
- 1 deal failed to get financing, up from 0 in February.
- All of our deals passed the home inspection, the same as in February.
- Of our closed deals, the average discount off list price for homes sold was 3.41%, down from 3.52% in February.
“Home-buyers should be prepared for a longer closing process because lenders are dealing with a higher refinance volume and stricter underwriting guidelines,” says Redfin Seattle agent Febe Cude. “Our clients are getting through inspection with no problems, but closing is taking longer because we’re often waiting to hear back from lenders about appraisals and underwriting.”
Look For Our April Report
We’ll be back next month with a report on what happened in April. What numbers would you like to see in our April report?
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