REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey: December 2019 Highlights

The REALTORS® Confidence Index (RCI) survey gathers monthly information from REALTORS® about local real estate market conditions, characteristics of buyers and sellers, and issues affecting homeownership and real estate transactions.¹ This report presents key results about market transactions from December 2019.

Market Conditions and Expectations

• The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index registered at 60 (48 in December 2018).²
• The REALTORS® Seller Traffic Index registered at 43 (39 in December 2018).
• The REALTORS® Confidence Index—Six-Month Outlook Current Conditions registered at 71 for detached single-family, 58 for townhome, and 55 for condominium properties. An index above 50 indicates market conditions are expected to improve.
• Properties were typically on the market for 41 days (46 days in December 2018).

Eighty-four percent of respondents reported that home prices remained constant or rose in December 2019 compared to levels one year ago (75% in December 2018).

Characteristics of Buyers and Sellers

• First-time buyers accounted for 31% of sales (32% in December 2018).
• Vacation and investment buyers comprised 17% of sales (13% in December 2018).
• Sales of distressed properties (foreclosed or sold as a short sale) accounted for 2% of sales (2% in December 2018).
• Cash sales made up 20% of sales (22% in December 2018).
• Twenty-two percent of sellers offered incentives such as paying for closing costs (11%), providing warranty (9%), and undertaking remodeling (3%).³

Issues Affecting Buyers and Sellers

• From October 2019–December 2019, 71% of contracts settled on time (75% in October 2018–December 2018).
• Among sales that closed in December 2019, 72% had contract contingencies. The most common contingencies pertained to home inspection (55%), obtaining financing (45%), and getting an acceptable appraisal (42%).
• REALTORS® report “low inventory” and “interest rate” as the major issues affecting transactions in December 2019.

About the RCI Survey

• The RCI survey gathers information from REALTORS® about local market conditions based on their client interactions and the characteristics of their most recent sales for the month.
• The December 2019 survey was sent to 50,000 REALTORS® who were selected from NAR’s more than 1.4 million members through simple random sampling and to 8,097 respondents in the previous three surveys who provided their email addresses.
• There were 4,425 respondents to the online survey which ran from January 1-11, 2020. The survey’s overall margin of error at the 95% confidence level is 1%. The margins of error for subgroups and sample proportions of below or above 50% are larger.
• NAR weighs the responses by a factor that aligns the sample distribution of responses to the distribution of NAR membership.

The REALTORS® Confidence Index is provided by NAR solely for use as a reference. Resale of any part of this data is prohibited without NAR's prior written consent. For questions on this report or to purchase the RCI series, please email: Data@realtors.org.

¹ Respondents report on the characteristics of their most recent sale for the month.

² An index greater than 50 means more respondents reported conditions as “strong” compared to one year ago than “weak.” An index of 50 indicates a balance of respondents who viewed conditions as “strong” or “weak.”

³ The difference in the sum of percentages to the total percentage of sellers who offered incentives is due to rounding.