REALTORS® Confidence Index: February 2020 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 the February 2020 survey.

Market Conditions and Expectations

• The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index registered at 72 (55 in February 2019).²
• The REALTORS® Seller Traffic Index registered at 47 (43 in February 2019).
• The REALTORS® Confidence Index—Six-Month Outlook Current Conditions registered at 75 for detached single-family, 62 for townhome, and 59 for condominium properties. An index above 50 indicates market conditions are expected to improve.
• Properties were typically on the market for 36 days (44 days in February 2019).
• Eighty-six percent of respondents reported that home prices remained constant or rose in February 2020 compared to levels one year ago (78% in February 2019).

Characteristics of Buyers and Sellers

• First-time buyers accounted for 32% of sales (32% in February 2019).
• Vacation and investment buyers comprised 24% of sales (16% in February 2019).
• Sales of distressed properties (foreclosed or sold as a short sale) accounted for 2% of sales (4% in February 2019).
• Cash sales made up 20% of sales (23% in February 2019).
• Twenty-one percent of sellers offered incentives such as paying for closing costs (10%), providing warranty (9%), and undertaking remodeling (3%).³

Issues Affecting Buyers and Sellers

• From December 2019 – February 2020, 77% of contracts settled on time (76% in December 2018 – February 2019).
• Among sales that closed in February 2020, 71% had contract contingencies. The most common contingencies pertained to home inspection (53%), getting an acceptable appraisal (44%), and obtaining financing (43%).
• REALTORS® report “low inventory” as the major issue affecting transactions in February 2020.

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 February 2020 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 10,000 respondents in the previous three surveys who provided their email addresses.
• There were 4,228 respondents to the online survey which ran from March 1–12, 2020, of which 2,033 had a client. Among those who had a client, the survey’s maximum margin of error for proportion estimates is 2% at the 95% confidence level. The margins of error for subgroups are larger.
• NAR weights 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.