Home sales this year saw the biggest decline since at least 2012, falling to 35% in November, according to real estate brokerage firm Redfin. There are fewer buyers bidding against each other and more contracts falling through.
The D.C. metro market mirrors all of these national trends.
In November, 43.3% of sales in the D.C. area had received competing offers, compared to 60.4% a year ago, according to transaction data collected by Redfin agents.
Competition slowed the most in some of the hottest sellers’ markets of the last two years, with competing bids accounting for less than 17% of transactions in Tampa and Phoenix. Just 8.1% of sales had multiple offers in Orlando last month.
The share of contracted sales in the D.C. metro that fell through for various reasons, such as the buyer no longer qualifying for the mortgage or the sellers failing to address contingencies, was 14.3% compared to 11.1% a year ago.
One in four contracts fell through in markets including Jacksonville, Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa and Dallas.
Nationwide, the year-over-year average price gain in home sales continued to slow in November at just 2.6%, while the month-over-month measure of median prices fell 1.5%.
Pandemic boomtown Las Vegas saw the biggest drop in home sales in November, down 51.8% from a year earlier. Sales were half last year’s pace in San Jose and Salt Lake City.
