REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey: November 2017 Highlights

The REALTORS® Confidence Index (RCI) survey[1] gathers monthly information from REALTORS® about local real estate market conditions, characteristics of buyers and sellers, and issues affecting homeownership and real estate transactions.[2] This report presents key results about market transactions from November 2017. View and download the full report here.

Market Conditions and Expectations

• The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index registered at 62 (57 in November 2016).[3]
• The REALTORS® Seller Traffic Index registered at 45 (42 in November 2016).
• The REALTORS® Confidence Index—Six-Month Outlook Current Conditions registered at 71 for detached single-family, 58 for townhome, and 56 for condominium properties. An index above 50 indicates market conditions are expected to improve.
• Properties were typically on the market for 40 days (43 days in November 2016).
• Eighty-eight percent of respondents reported that home prices remained constant or rose in November 2017 compared to levels one year ago (84 percent in November 2016).

Characteristics of Buyers and Sellers

• First-time buyers accounted for 29 percent of sales (32 percent in November 2016).
• Vacation and investment buyers comprised 14 percent of sales (14 percent in November 2016).
• Sales of distressed properties (foreclosed or sold as a short sale) accounted for four percent of sales (six percent in November 2016).
• Cash sales made up 22 percent of sales (21 percent in November 2016).
• Twenty percent of sellers offered incentives such as paying for closing costs (nine percent), providing a warranty (nine percent), and undertaking remodeling (three percent).[4]

Issues Affecting Buyers and Sellers

• From September–November 2017, 75 percent of contracts settled on time (63 percent in November 2016).
• Among sales that closed in November 2017, 74 percent had contract contingencies. The most common contingencies pertained to home inspection (55 percent), obtaining financing (46 percent), and getting an acceptable appraisal (44 percent).
• REALTORS® report “low inventory” and “tax reform” as the major concerns affecting transactions in November 2017.

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 November 2017 survey was sent to 50,000 REALTORS® who were selected from NAR’s nearly 1.2 million members through simple random sampling and to 5,665 respondents in the previous three surveys who provided their email addresses.
• There were 3,585 respondents to the online survey which ran from December 1‒11, 2017.
• The survey’s overall margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level is two percent. The margins of error for subgroups and sample proportions of below or above 50 percent 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.