Buyers Feeling the Heat in These Markets

Housing may be slowing down, but bidding wars are still being waged in the nation's hottest real estate markets, located in Washington, D.C., California, and Boston.

Even though the share of home purchase bids with competing offers hit a 2011 low, (the lowest since Redfin started tracking this metric), and has decreased 13 percent annually to 32 percent, coastal markets are still seeing strong buyer competition, including those that are cooling off the quickest. More than 85 percent of Redfin offers faced competition from other buyers in the top "bidding war" ZIP codes found in Oakland, Calif., Washington, D.C., and Orange County, Calif. Other ZIPs with 70 percent or more of Redfin homebuyer offers involved in a bidding war were located in Boston, San Francisco, and San Jose, Calif.

One previously red-hot market is notably absent from the list: Seattle. The only Seattle ZIP code where more than half of Redfin offers faced competition in the last three months was 98115, which encompasses the Seattle neighborhoods of Maple Leaf, Wedgwood, and View Ridge.

During the spring selling season earlier this year three out of four offers in Seattle faced competition. As of November only about one of every four offers in the Seattle area faced competition, one of the lowest rates among Redfin’s largest markets.

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