New Data Points to Flattening in Housing Demand

Is housing demand starting to cool down? The latest Redfin Housing Demand Index report came in at a 120 reading, down 0.7 percent from May to June and down 9.6 percent from one year earlier. June’s numbers represented the largest decline recorded for this report since April 2016.

 

Redfin blamed the drop on a 2.2 percent decrease in the seasonally adjusted number of Redfin-associated homebuyers requesting tours and a 12.2 percent decrease in the number making offers on homes from May to June. Across the 15 metros covered by the Demand Index, the total number of homes for sale fell 3.8 percent from one year earlier, while the number of homes newly listed in June fell 1.6 percent from June 2017. Still, some markets showed continued activity, most notably in Portland where local homebuyer demand increased 12.3 percent on an annualized basis.

 

"As much-needed large inventory increases finally arrive in some of the hottest markets, buyers are taking the opportunity to be choosy, offering only on well-priced homes," said Pete Ziemkiewicz, head of analytics at Redfin. "These cooling trends are concentrated in the markets that became the most uncomfortably hot over the past few years, so it's too soon to tell whether this is the start of a broader cooling or simply a return to something more like balance in places that had become extreme seller's markets. Plenty of large markets, like Chicago and Atlanta, are continuing to see increasing buyer demand and shrinking inventory."