Large cities are starting to see more homebuyer competition. According to housing market platform Redfin, eight of the most populous U.S. metros are seeing buyers return, and many of them are buying homes for more than their listing price. In San Francisco, 57.2% of homes that sold went for more than their original asking price, up 7.5 percentage points from one year earlier. This was followed by Nassau County, N.Y., at 4.4 percentage points, San Jose, Calif., at 3.5 percentage points, and Milwaukee at 2.7 percentage points.
Across the U.S., 20.5% of homes sold for above their original list price in February, down from 22.8% a year earlier. However, 64.2% of homes sold for less than their original asking price, compared with 60.9% a year earlier.
“The Bay Area has an unending population of people with enormous swaths of money,” said Josh Felder, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in the Bay Area. “A decade or so ago, we all thought the growth in home prices was unsustainable, but they just keep going up and up.
That’s partly because there aren’t enough homes for sale, and partly because tech continues to boom despite ups and downs in the stock market and geopolitical uncertainty.” Read more
