Well over half of the home offers written by Redfin agents in July faced no opposing bids, a continuation of a six-month pullback in the competition through which the company’s buyer clients have had to wade.

The Seattle-based real estate company reported on Friday that 44 percent of the proposed purchase contracts written by its agents ended up in a multiple-offer situation, down from 51 percent the month before and 70 percent as recently as January.

It’s a dramatic scaleback that has returned bidding wars to their lowest levels since April 2020, when early shutdowns and uncertainty over the spread of the coronavirus briefly slowed the housing market to a crawl.

Even for those buyers who found themselves in a bidding war in July, the market became noticeably less crowded. The typical home in a multiple-offer situation had 3.5 offers last month, down from 4.1 the month before and 5.3 in July of last year, Redfin said.

“The market is wildly different than it was a few months ago,” Alexis Malin, a Redfin agent in Jacksonville, Florida, said in the report. “Buyers are competing with one to two other offers instead of four to eight. Some aren’t facing competition at all.” 

As mortgage rates have risen from below 3 percent to above 5 percent this year, many buyers have been priced out of the market, and demand has declined as a result.

But many of Redfin’s clients, who remain on the hunt for a home in recent weeks, have felt empowered to make more buyer-friendly offers.

“Buyers have also started writing offers for less than sellers’ list prices — a reversal from the height of the pandemic, when homes were going for tens of thousands of dollars over asking,” Malin said. “I haven’t written an over-asking offer in a month.”

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