Redfin: May Home Prices Jump 17%, Volume Reaches Four-Year High

SEATTLE-Technology-powered real estate brokerage Redfin (www.redfin.com) has released its Real-Time Home Price Tracker, posting gains in both prices and sales volume across 19 major U.S. markets in May. While inventory was down year over year in May, it increased from the previous month. The easing of the inventory crunch likely contributed to home sales volume, which hit the highest level since 2010.

Home prices:

-- May home prices increased 17% year over year, and rose 4% since April.

Sales volume:

-- Home sales were up 14% from 2012, and 16% from April.

-- More than 79,000 homes sales closed in the 19 markets covered in this

report in May, the largest amount since January 2010.

Inventory: 

-- While down 22% from last year, inventory showed a monthly increase of

4.3%.

This report is the earliest monthly analysis of home prices, sales and inventory across 19 U.S. markets, published weeks before any other index, based on the local databases used directly by Realtors to list properties and record sales.

Market-Specific Highlights and Lowlights:

Home prices:

-- For the second consecutive month, all of the 19 cities measured saw home

prices rise year over year.

-- Austin was the only market to post a decrease in home prices month over

month, dropping by 0.4%.

-- Sacramento led the price gains with a 39% year-over-year increase.

-- Baltimore saw the smallest gain in prices, with a 3.2% increase year

over year.

Sales volume:

-- New York's Long Island posted the largest yearly sales volume increase,

with home sales up 74.7% from May 2012.

-- Boston had the largest monthly increase in sales volume, up 38% from

April.

-- San Francisco's sales volumes saw the most drastic decline, with a 7.7%

drop from a year earlier.

-- San Francisco and Las Vegas had the smallest monthly gains, both up 4.2%

from April.

Inventory:

-- Chicago and Phoenix were the only markets that had an increase in

inventory from May 2012, with Phoenix up 14.1% and Chicago up 0.4%.

-- Cities with the largest monthly gains in inventory included Chicago

(16.8%), Denver (10%), San Jose (8.4%), Washington (6.3%), and Seattle

(5%).

-- Six of the 19 markets saw monthly inventory shrink in May and five of

those were in California, including Inland Empire (-7.3%), Las Vegas

(-1.4%), Los Angeles (-1.3%), Ventura (-1.0%), and San Francisco

(-0.5%).

-- The only market outside of California to post a decrease in inventory

was Boston, showing a monthly decline of 1% from April.

As a broker with access to dozens of Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) used by real estate agents to list properties and record sales, Redfin gets data within minutes of a sale, pending sale or listing activation, well before any government, media or analytics organization. Using MLS fields, Redfin is able to distinguish houses from condominiums and townhouses, which often sell for less money. To validate the accuracy of the data and to account for sales not handled by a real estate agent, Redfin compares MLS data with county records as they become available, using sophisticated algorithms to identify and resolve disparities about square footage or price for each address. Data at the local and neighborhood level are available in a spreadsheet, and the report methodology is available as an Adobe document.