Full disclosure: The Tim is employed by Redfin.
Wednesday afternoon, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman posted an interesting story on Redfin’s Seattle blog: "Everything Changed in the Past Six Weeks"
Bryon Ziegler, part of Redfin’s crack Capitol Hill team, just wandered into my office to talk about bidding wars. The last ten straight offers he has handled all turned into bidding wars. This isn’t just the usual $300,000 bank-owned property being auction-priced for a quick sale.
Except for maybe Belltown condos—which are like a vast, derelict Atlantis, all underwater—every decent listing seems to be getting multiple offers. Bryon just put in a multi-million dollar all-cash offer on a home that had been on the market for 300+ days, only to have two other offers turn up at the same time.
“Everything changed just in the past six weeks,” Bryon said. “In February, you were the savior if you came in with an offer. Now, the reaction is: take a number. And if you don’t come with all guns blazing, you’re usually a day late and a dollar short.”
Glenn & Bryon tipped off King5, who picked up the story and ran with it last night (although they inexplicably gave a Coldwell Banker agent a lot more face time than Redfin—what’s up with that?):
I haven’t seen any particularly strong uptick in any of the stats I watch on a regular basis, but the action that Bryon and this Coldwell agent are describing seems to be a very recent phenomenon, so it might take a month or two to show up in the closed sales data if it’s a real trend. Redfin isn’t the type to perennially make claims like “open house traffic is up” and other vague sales pitches in a shameless attempt to pump the market (which is a large part of why I joined them), so I’m inclined to believe that there’s at least something to the claim.
I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has actually been shopping for a home close-in to Seattle in recent weeks. Are you seeing the kind of intense market that is described in the above video, or is that kind of action limited to a specific, narrow band of property types and locations?