Redfin Data
Introduction
Redfin is a technology-enabled residential real estate brokerage that publishes housing market research and downloadable datasets through its public Data Center. The platform offers free, publicly accessible data on U.S. residential real estate activity derived from MLS connections and Redfin’s own brokerage operations. The data is used by journalists, researchers, real estate professionals, and analysts who track housing market trends at the national, metropolitan, state, county, city, zip code, and neighborhood levels.
The Data Center has become a familiar resource in real estate market analysis and housing research. Redfin’s position as a major residential brokerage with tens of thousands of buyers and agents annually gives the company access to a broad view of market activity and buyer behavior that underlies its published metrics.
What Redfin Data Sells
Redfin’s Data Center is a free, web-based platform offering downloadable housing market datasets and dashboards. The platform delivers market-level indicators—medians, aggregates, shares, and ratios—rather than individual property records or unit-level data. Users can access raw metrics, year-over-year changes, and month-over-month or week-over-week changes across multiple geographies.
The core product is the Housing Market Tracker, a comprehensive dataset covering roughly 40 metrics spanning sales activity, listings, prices, time on market, and market balance. Data is published on a weekly (rolling four-week) and monthly basis. Additional themed datasets track price drops, home purchase cancellations, investor activity, financing trends, luxury and starter home markets, delistings and relistings, and U.S. migration patterns based on search behavior.
Key Features
Data Coverage
Redfin’s datasets cover residential properties nationwide: single-family homes, condos, townhouses, and multifamily (2-4 unit) properties. Monthly data extends to neighborhoods, zip codes, cities, counties, and states. Weekly and monthly data are published for the nation and metropolitan areas. Geographic definitions align with U.S. Office of Management and Budget metropolitan divisions and metropolitan statistical areas.
Data Freshness and Update Schedule
Weekly Housing Market Tracker data is published every Thursday. Monthly data releases occur on a regular schedule with new estimates published roughly a week earlier than in prior years. Data reflects a lag due to transaction recording delays; the platform addresses this through continuous revisions of historical estimates and pre-emptive adjustments of the most recent periods to account for anticipated future revisions.
Data Sources and Methodology
Redfin sources data from MLS feeds in its coverage areas and public county records. A distinctive feature is the use of proprietary data on buyer search time—specifically, the time from a buyer’s first home tour to closing. This proprietary signal feeds into Redfin’s estimate of active buyers in the market, an approach that complements public MLS data on active listings and home sales. The company also uses Redfin transaction data from its own agents to inform metrics like the balance of buyers and sellers, investor activity, and financing trends.
Data Quality and Seasonal Adjustment
All monthly metrics use X-13ARIMA-SEATS, the same seasonal adjustment framework employed by the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Reserve. Weekly metrics including new listings, pending sales, active listings, and median new list prices are seasonally adjusted using Bayesian Structural Time Series models. Price-based metrics like sale-to-list ratio and days on market are published without seasonal adjustment due to less pronounced seasonal patterns. The platform excludes flips (homes sold within 180 days) from the repeat-sales home price index and omits outlier sales with price ratios outside the 0.5 to 2.0 range.
Delivery and Access
Data is accessible through browser-based dashboards and downloadable as tab-separated or compressed files. Reports can be customized by region type, state, and property type and exported as PDF. A data dictionary with metric definitions is publicly available. All data requires attribution; users are asked to cite Redfin as the source.
Pricing and Tiers
All datasets in Redfin’s Data Center are free and publicly accessible. There are no paid tiers, premium access levels, or API subscriptions for the core market-level datasets. Download, use, and redistribution are permitted with proper attribution.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free public access with no registration or paywall
- Comprehensive dataset covering 40+ metrics across multiple geographies
- Weekly and monthly update cadence
- Seasonally adjusted data using established statistical methods
- Institutional credibility from a major residential brokerage
- Long historical record (back to 2012 for some metrics)
- Transparent methodology documentation
- Proprietary data on buyer search time provides unique signal
Cons
- Market-level data only; no property-level or unit-level records
- Coverage limited to geographies where Redfin has significant MLS access
- Not designed for real estate valuation models or AVM training
- Buyer estimates derived from Redfin’s sample and model assumptions; not a census
- No API access for automated data pulls
- Migration data based on search intent, not confirmed moves
- Lag in transaction recording creates a 2-4 week curing window for recent periods
- No rental pricing data; focuses on for-sale residential market
Alternatives
- Dwellsy IQ provides unit-level rental data from property management software covering single-family and multifamily residential and commercial properties. The platform offers normalized rent data by market and supports rental pricing engines, research, underwriting, and portfolio monitoring. Dwellsy IQ serves tech platforms, investors, appraisers, operators, and researchers; it does not compete directly on for-sale market analytics but offers rental-specific depth where Redfin does not.
- Zillow Research publishes housing market data and research reports covering prices, inventory, and market trends. Data is drawn from Zillow’s listing platform and includes price trends, days on market, and market-level indicators for U.S. metros and neighborhoods. Zillow Research overlaps with Redfin on market-level analytics but emphasizes its own listing data and research output.
- National Association of Realtors Data provides official market statistics through its existing home sales reports, profile data, and research. NAR data is compiled from a sample of MLSs and is published by the trade association representing U.S. real estate professionals. NAR is often used as the benchmark for national and regional existing home sales figures.
- CoreLogic Market Trends offers commercial and residential real estate market data, including home price indices, market reports, and transaction analytics. CoreLogic focuses on comprehensive market coverage and proprietary valuation models and appeals to institutional investors, appraisers, and underwriters seeking detailed market and property-level intelligence.
- Black Knight / ICE Mortgage Technology provides mortgage, lending, and housing market data derived from mortgage and loan-level records. The platform serves lenders, servicers, and market participants with underwriting, portfolio, and market analytics tied to the mortgage segment; it complements rather than directly replaces for-sale market dashboards.
FAQ
What geographic levels does Redfin Data cover?
Redfin publishes weekly and monthly data at the national level and for metropolitan areas. Monthly data also extends to states, counties, cities, zip codes, and neighborhoods. Not all regions have sufficient data quality and sample size; only regions meeting Redfin’s coverage thresholds are available.
Can I download Redfin Data and use it in my analysis or application?
Yes. All data in Redfin’s Data Center is free to download and use for any purpose, including research, journalism, and internal analysis. The company asks that users cite Redfin as the source. There are no restrictions on redistribution or embedding in products, subject to proper attribution.
Does Redfin Data include rental pricing information?
No. Redfin’s Data Center focuses on for-sale residential markets derived from MLS data and brokerage transactions. The platform does not publish unit-level rent data or rental market metrics. Redfin does publish a separate Rental Market Tracker with rental trend data, but it is distinct from the main Data Center.
How often is Redfin Data updated?
Weekly Housing Market Tracker metrics are published every Thursday. Monthly data follows a release calendar with new periods typically published 1-2 weeks into the following month. Additional datasets like investor activity and financing trends are published quarterly. Historical data is subject to continuous revisions as additional transaction records arrive.
What is the “balance of buyers and sellers” metric, and how is it calculated?
The balance of buyers and sellers estimates the ratio of active buyers to active sellers in the market using MLS data on homes for sale, MLS data on home sales, and Redfin’s proprietary data on buyer search time. The metric identifies whether a market is a “buyer’s market,” “seller’s market,” or balanced. It is published monthly for the nation and top 50 metros and serves as a forward indicator of price trends and time on market.
