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 January 2021 survey.

Key Market Indicators

  • The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index registered at 76 (68 in January 2020).2
  • The REALTORS® Seller Traffic Index registered at 35 (47 in January 2020).2
  • Properties were typically on the market for 21 days (43 days in January 2020).
  • First-time buyers accounted for 33% of sales (32% in January 2020).
  • Cash sales made up 19% of sales (21% in January 2020).
Line graph: Buyer and Seller Traffic January 2008 to July 2020

Market Outlook

  • The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index: 3-Month Outlook registered at 78
  • The REALTORS® Seller Traffic Index: 3-Month Outlook registered at 49
  • REALTORS® expect a 3.0 increase in home sales in the next 3 months vs the same period one year ago.
  • REALTORS® expect a 4.9 increase in home prices in the next 3 months vs the same period one year ago.
  • REALTORS® expect a 4.1 increase in home prices in the next 12 months from January 2020.
Bar chart: Sales Volume and Price Expectations 3-Month Outlook

Issues Affecting Buyers and Sellers

  • From November 2020 - January 2020, 65% of contracts settled on time.
  • Among rent options to assist residential tenants, the most common options were options to pay over the next coming months (42%), rent abatement (22%), frequent smaller payments (24%), none at all (12%), and other options (0%).
  • REALTORS® report "low-inventory and high-demand" as the major issues affecting transactions in December 2020.
Line graph: Contract Settlement, November 2015 to November 2020

REALTOR® Concerns

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 January 2021 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 6,715 respondents in the previous three surveys who provided their email addresses.
  • There were 4,041 respondents to the online survey which ran from February 1-8, 2021, of which 1,809 had a client. Among those who had a client, the survey’s maximum margin of error for proportion estimates is two percent at the 95 percent 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."

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