The Redfin Real-Time Home Buyer Survey has yielded data that is very complementary to the brokerage’s seller survey from last week.

By Stephanie Sims

Interested in what prospective clients think of the market? Redfin’s latest quarterly homebuyer survey answers could help you better reach and help your clients.

Less than two weeks ago, Redfin collected data from 829 people across 19 metropolitan markets in the U.S. and compiled the results for The Redfin Real-Time Home Buyer Survey.

Redfin Real-Time Home Buyer Survey – Prospective Buyers and the Housing Market

The Redfin Real-Time Home Buyer Survey findings included:

• Forty six percent believe now is a good time to buy, down two quarters in a row; and 32 percent believe now is a good time to sell, up two quarters in a row.
• Sixty-one percent believe prices will increase, up two quarters in a row.
• Sixty-two percent are “very interested” in conventional sales, up from 57 percent in the second quarter and 48 percent in the first quarter.
• Thirty-one percent would step back from competing against other buyers for a home, compared to 28 percent in the second quarter.
• Twenty-seven percent of respondents cited general economic weakness as a concern about buying this year, up from 24 percent in the second quarter and 20 percent in the first quarter.

Echoes of the Redfin Real-Time Home Seller Survey

Those results echo the results of Redfin’s Real-Time Home Seller Survey, which was released last week – 80 percent of sellers believe their home will sell for a higher price if they wait just one to two years, and only 13 percent believe it is a good time to sell, even despite a rise in bidding wars in various markets. Part of that may be because, although it technically is still a great time to buy, buyers aren’t finding a home they want to invest in in this market.

In comments accompanying the Redfin Real-Time Home Buyer Survey, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman reinforced the idea of low housing inventory.

“Even as prices have begun to rise, the overwhelming issue for most of today’s buyers is the selection of homes for sale, not what they cost,” Kelman said. “The value-driven investors scooping up foreclosures for pennies on the dollar have largely been replaced by first-timers seeking to buy a pretty house now when mortgage rates are below 4 percent. With so few houses for sale, many will come up empty.”