Competition among homebuyers is easing. In fact, it is at an eight-year low, according to a report by Redfin, which indicated that 32 percent of offers written by their agents on behalf of homebuyers faced one or more competing bid.
Last year, in November, this figure stood at 45 percent. Despite this cooling down of competition, certain ZIP codes in California, Boston, and Washington D.C., continue to have a competitive market making them the centers of bidding wars. Topping the list is 96402 in Oakland, California, where 90 percent of offers faced competition in the September to November period.
ZIP Code 20009 in Washington, D.C., was the next hotbed for warring homebuyers where 85 percent of offers faced competition from September to November 2018. This was an increase from the 67 percent competition seen in this area last year. 92870 in Orange County, California tied with 20009 for the second spot for the five most competitive markets in the country.
Three ZIP codes, one each in San Francisco(94110); Washington, D.C. (20904); and Boston (01890) tied for the third spot with competition on offers rising to 80 percent from not having a large enough volume of offers last year. However, competition in the Washington, D.C. ZIP code of 20904 actually fell from 83 percent in the September to November period in 2017.
Two Boston ZIP codes, 02148 and 02476 took the fourth spot with 79 percent offers facing bidding wars in both these areas. However, ZIP code 02148 saw a sizeable dip when compared to last year when all the offers that came on the market facing bidding wars among buyers.
95630 in Sacramento and 95035 in San Jose rounded off the top five with 73 percent of the offers facing competition.
A notable market that was absent from the list was Seattle, the report indicated, adding that during the spring selling season three out of four offers in Seattle had faced competition. "As of November, only about one of every five offers in the Seattle area faced competition, the lowest rate of Redfin's largest market," the report revealed.