Redfin report shows 11.1 percent increase in median home prices
By Dolores Quintana
Are Westside home prices rising?
On the Westside of Los Angeles, Redfin.com has reported that the median price for homes in the area is $2.1 million and went up about 11.1 percent in comparison to the previous year. A grand total of 895 homes sold, an increase from the previous year’s total of 749.
During the pandemic, most office and other white collar workers have switched to remote work from home out of necessity, which has allowed many more people to buy houses that are outside of the traditional areas that make commutes less burdensome. This fact combined with low mortgage rates drove a buying frenzy throughout the United States. According to Redfin.com, the peak of the bidding war rate was in April of 2021, when that rate reached a high of 74.6 percent. Redfin’s standard of a bidding war for a home is if their agent receives one other competitive bid for a home after the first bid is placed. As the year wound down and the holidays arrived, the bidding war rate dropped to a low of 59.6 percent in December as mortgage rates started to rise.
Even so, the lack of available homes for sale keeps the market extremely competitive. Candace Evans, a Redfin team manager in New York, as quoted by Redfin.com, “Buyers should anticipate that they may not win a house until their sixth or seventh bid. If you’re the type of person who falls in love with a house, this is not your market. If you show a house to 10 buyers, you’ll probably get eight offers. An agent on my team just put a home in the Bronx on the market and started receiving offers even though there hadn’t been a single open house or tour yet. The house ultimately received over 10 offers and went for well above the asking price.”
In comparison, the bidding war rate in December of 2020 was 54 percent so while December of 2021 had the lowest bidding war rate of the year, it was still more than the year before. The rate in November was 61.3 percent which is only a difference of 1.7 percent.
