Redfin Survey: 35% of Recent Homebuyers Bid on a Home Before Seeing it in Person

45% of Millennial Homebuyers Made an Offer Sight-Unseen; More than Half of Respondents in Los Angeles Did So

SEATTLE, Feb. 26, 2018 -- Thirty-five percent of people who bought a home last year said they made an offer without first seeing it in person, according to a late-2017 survey commissioned by Redfin, the next-generation real estate brokerage. That's up from 33 percent in May 2017, and 19 percent in June 2016.

This is based on a Redfin-commissioned survey conducted in November and December 2017, which included responses from 1,503 people who purchased a home in the previous 12 months. Today's report is the final issue of a three-part series on the results of the survey. The first and second reports focused on politics and the housing market.

Millennial homebuyers were even more likely to make an offer sight-unseen, with 45 percent in November and 41 percent in May saying they had done so. These results likely reflect millennials' comfort relying on information they find online about homes for sale, neighborhoods they might not have visited in person, and the home-buying process in general.

More than half (57%) of respondents who bought a home in Los Angeles last year made an offer sight-unseen. The prevalence of foreign investors in L.A. may have played a role in sight-unseen offers' popularity there. The market-by-market breakdown below shows that the trend was also driven by buyers in other competitive California metros, with 46 percent in San Diego and 44 percent in San Francisco having done so.

People who can't get in to tour a home right away because they're busy or relocating from out of town often rely on tools like Redfin 3D Walkthrough and FaceTime® to explore the home itself, and the vast array of statistics, reviews, maps and articles online that can help a prospective buyer understand what it's like to live in a neighborhood. However, in the case of offering sight-unseen, the agent can be a buyer's greatest resource.

Angela Hunter, a Redfin agent in Omaha, worked with a family relocating from Jacksonville, Florida to Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska.

"This family had a only a few weeks to find a home and they did not want to live on-base or rent," Hunter said. "Because the wife was 8 months pregnant at the time, they needed a move-in ready home within 20 minutes of the base. While conducting video tours with them, I was very careful to explain things that they would not be able to experience virtually, like the sounds, smells, and textures. I pointed out flaws that are hard to detect through video so that nothing would be a surprise to them once they visited in person. It's not the easiest way to shop for a home, but together we found the perfect match."

With no end to the housing shortage in view and more millennials entering the housing market, the trend toward sight-unseen bids is likely to grow in 2018.

To read the full report, complete with data, charts and a full methodology, click here.

About Redfin

Redfin is the next-generation real estate brokerage, combining its own full-service agents with modern technology to redefine real estate in the consumer's favor. Founded by software engineers, Redfin has the country's #1 brokerage website and offers a host of online tools to consumers, including the Redfin Estimate, the automated home-value estimate with the industry's lowest published error rate for listed homes. Homebuyers and sellers enjoy a full-service, technology-powered experience from Redfin real estate agents, while saving thousands in commissions. Redfin serves more than 80 major metro areas across the U.S. The company has closed more than $50 billion in home sales.