Then we surveyed our customers, just to see how they were feeling about the market, and 63% of them told us low inventory was a major concern.   So we looked into the nationwide inventory shortage some more and found that over the last year, inventory had shrunk in every single one of our markets.  And desperate times call for desperate measures: home buyers are going door-to-door making offers on houses that aren’t for sale, and our agents are receiving emails asking if they have any pocket listings (homes that are for sale, but not listed).

Float over any county on the map or its colored bar on the table for more details about inventory in that city.

Powered by Tableau

So what’s the story in Philly? Compared to the rest of the country, the inventory situation isn’t so bad.  Of the markets where Redfin operates, Philly is 4^th on the list after Chicago in terms of the number of listings per 1,000 households.

But at the county level, the Philadelphia market has some interesting differences. For example, in Philadelphia County, home buyers have the least selection with just 15.7 homes on the market for every 1,000 households. Moving outside of the city, listings become more plentiful.  In Chester County, there are 20.4 listings for every 1,000 households, and New Jersey home buyers have hit the jackpot with as many as 34.3 listings per 1,000 households in Salem County.“With most counties still seeing falling home prices, homeowners in the pricier areas such as Montgomery and Bucks Counties are probably waiting for prices to start to rise before they think about selling,” explained Linda Wolbers, Redfin’s Philadelphia Area Manager. “Unemployment may also be a contributing factor, as some of the counties with more homes for sale also have higher levels of unemployment.”

Float over any county on the map or its colored bar on the table for more details about inventory in that city.

Powered by Tableau

How do you feel about the selection of homes for sale in Philly?  Please join us to meet our agents and talk about inventory and celebrate our arrival in Philly at our community launch party on March 28^th!

What took us so long? It’s hard to figure out how to deliver great service and still pay agents good money in a place like Philly, where the average home sells for $182,000. In our first expansion market, San Francisco, the average is now $894,000. We’ve learned how to stay busy from summer to winter, how to focus on a handful of neighborhoods rather than the whole town, and how long to wait to make any money.

Even people who don’t work with our agents will probably go nuts just for the online tools. Redfin is the first brokerage website in Philly to give consumers the whole enchilada: complete pricing history, eyewitness comments from agents who have toured the home, as well as pictures and prices of past sales.

This means that Philly real estate phanatics now have direct access to the same MLS data used by local agents, with details no other Philadelphia broker has ever displayed. It also means that the top-rated mobile applications for real estate are now available in Philly, so all that information is at your fingertips as you walk through a house.

With such a big data advantage, we expect our online traffic from Philly to take off like a shot. Even though our newer markets tend to be smaller, they mostly grow faster and faster as Redfin becomes known nationwide. It now takes us about four months to reach 100,000 website visits in a new market, whereas a few years ago it took eight.

This is especially true when we open a market like Philly, in close proximity to places where we’re already well known, like Washington DC and parts of New York.

Starting today, customers can work directly with Redfin agents in the Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy and Manayunk neighborhoods of Philadelphia, as well as the Main Line townships, the northern suburbs in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, and Chester and Delaware counties to the West.

For now, customers in Center City and the rest of Philadelphia can work with our partner agents, but as we grow our local business, we’ll expand our direct service into Center City and eventually Philly’s New Jersey suburbs.

We’re so excited to enter the City of Brotherly Love that we’ll be holding our first-ever community launch party in Philly on March 28^th! Everyone is invited! Whether you’re a customer or agent, inspector or lender, or you just want to know what we’re all about, please join us to eat, drink and mingle with the Philly team and Redfin execs as we celebrate this huge milestone.

Want to get in touch with Linda and the Philadelphia team?  Send us an email at philadelphia@redfin.com or call 484-962-0034.  We look forward to working with you!