Seattle-based real restate company Redfin is resuming its RedfinNow home-buying business in four additional markets, the company announced Friday, continuing to power back up a business that was paused because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The move to buy homes again in Dallas, San Antonio, Los Angeles and Orange County, Calif., follows a May 7 resumption in Austin, Denver and California’s Inland Empire. RedfinNow stopped making offers on March 17 as economic uncertainty showed the real estate market taking a turn for the worse.
Zillow Group is following a similar trajectory as it has also been resuming home-buying activity through its Zillow Offers business in markets across the U.S. Zillow paused in 24 markets because of the health crisis, but cites data showing a steadily recovering real estate market as it most recently restarted in Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, San Diego and Sacramento, Calif.
“Redfin’s home buying demand has been on the rise since mid-April and is now more than 30 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels,” said Quinn Hawkins, head of RedfinNow, in a news release.
Zillow says new for-sale listings are up 19.3 percent month over month and newly pending sales are up 24.5 percent over the past month. Traffic to for-sale listings on Zillow is up 51 percent from a year ago.
While analysts predict a surge of interest in the real estate market this summer, homeowners are still struggling with the effects of the economic crisis. CNBC reported a sharp rise Friday in the number of borrowers who are delaying their monthly mortgage payments due to the pandemic.
Both Redfin and Zillow tout their businesses as a safe and convenient way to buy and sell homes, with limited human interaction and increased technology such as 3D virtual walkthrough tours and the ability to close transactions digitally.
The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked increased speculation about the resilience of the real estate market and whether home shoppers might shift their priorities and get away from crowded cities. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman predicted a “seismic demographic shift toward smaller cities” back in May when he said remote work could drive people to leave expensive tech hubs such as Seattle and San Francisco and look at places such as Boise, Idaho, or Bozeman, Mont.
Zillow forecast a similar trend, saying that people working from home during the pandemic had learned that they needed more space, and bigger homes away in the suburbs could become more desirable.
