Interactive tool · Companion to Research Project 02
Offer Intelligence Explorer
Public data shows where a sale ended. It rarely shows the offers behind it. Explore five market signals for the Washington, DC metropolitan area, then step through a fictional sale to see what a closing price leaves out. Built alongside The Invisible Market.
Part 1 · Public market signals
What the public numbers show
Five Zillow measures for the Washington, DC metropolitan area — a multi-jurisdiction region, not the District alone and not separate DC, Maryland or Virginia results — with Redfin alongside where a comparable measure was analyzed. Annual figures are unweighted means of monthly values. Only these summary points are drawn — there is no monthly line, and 2023–2024 are not part of this summary.
Summary chart
Sales above list price
Zillow measure: Share of sales sold above list price
Often read as a sign of competitive bidding, though it says nothing about how many offers a home received.
Annual mean · Zillow
−11.33 pts- 2022
- 47.38%
- 2025
- 36.05%
2022 vs. 2025. Unweighted mean of monthly values.
Same months · Zillow
−3.1 pts- Jan–Aug 2025
- 39.9%
- Jan–Aug 2026
- 36.8%
January–August 2025 vs. January–August 2026, so seasonality is held roughly constant. Zillow only.
Second source · Redfin
−11.39 pts- 2022
- 42.54%
- 2025
- 31.15%
Redfin measures sales against the original list price. Zillow's measure is reported as sold above list price; this summary does not establish whether Zillow uses the original or most recent list price. Treat the two shares as non-equivalent.
Share of homes sold above original list price. 2022 vs. 2025; no 2026 Redfin data. Compare direction, not level.
Part 2 · Illustrative example
Inside one fictional sale
A made-up $600,000 listing receives three offers. Switch between what a sale-level record would show and what the offers themselves contained, then rank the offers by different seller priorities.
Illustrative — fictional. This listing, these offers and their closing-time assumptions are invented for explanation. They are not observed transactions, not drawn from the market data above, and not OfferIntel data.
- List price
- $600,000
- Recorded sale price (gross)
- $605,000
- Sale-to-list ratio
- 100.83%
- Counted as sold above list
- Yes
- Offers visible
- 1 — the winning price only
- Terms visible
- None
From the closing record alone, nothing shows that two other offers existed, that one of them was higher, or that the winning offer included a seller concession. In this example the record carries the gross contract price of $605,000; the concession is not subtracted from it.
Most offers leave no trace
Two of the three offers never appear in sale-level data.
The highest price didn't win
Offer A was the highest at $610,000 but was not the one accepted.
Headline price isn't the whole price
Offer C is recorded at its gross $605,000. After its $5,000 concession, its illustrative net — $600,000 before commissions and fees — equals Offer B's cash price. The example cannot say why the seller chose it; that context lives in terms and conversations.
Illustrative · fictional listing, offers and timelines · not observed transactions.
Part 3 · From research to product
Where OfferIntel fits
OfferIntel is a live market-intelligence and offer-management platform. Its OfferHub workflow collects and compares offers and carries an accepted offer through to closing — the structured, offer-level record that the fictional example shows is missing from public summaries.
No OfferIntel data is used here. Market figures come from public Zillow and Redfin downloads; the offer example is fictional.
OfferIntel was created by Azmera Abraham.
Method & limitations
How to read these numbers
Every market value comes from the author's analysis of public downloads. Nothing is modeled, forecast or filled in.
Data
Zillow: five monthly metro-level metrics, January 2022–August 2026. Redfin: three monthly comparison metrics, January 2022–December 2025. Washington, DC metropolitan area as defined by each provider — a multi-jurisdiction region, not broken out by DC, Maryland or Virginia.
Averaging
Annual figures are unweighted means of monthly values (a mean of monthly medians, for median measures). They are not weighted by the number of transactions in each month.
Comparisons
2022 vs. 2025 uses full calendar years. Jan–Aug 2025 vs. Jan–Aug 2026 compares the same months because 2026 data ends in August. No same-month sale-to-list comparison was part of the summary, and there is no 2026 Redfin data.
Definitions differ
Redfin's above-list share uses the original list price. Zillow's is reported as sold above list price; this summary does not establish whether that is the original or most recent list price. Zillow reports a median sale-to-list ratio, Redfin an average. Days to pending and days on market cover different intervals. Compare directions, not levels.
What it can't show
These are descriptive summaries. They don't explain why conditions changed, and they contain no offer-level information — number of offers, terms, concessions or contingencies.
The fictional example
The $600,000 listing and its three offers are invented to illustrate what sale-level data leaves out. Offer C is recorded at its gross $605,000; $600,000 is an illustrative net after the concession, before commissions and fees. Days-to-close figures are fictional teaching assumptions, not market estimates. Not observed transactions and not OfferIntel data.
The priority ranking
Each selected seller priority ranks the three fictional offers (ties share a rank); ranks are added with equal weight and the lowest total ranks first. "Fewer contingencies" counts the fictional inspection and financing contingencies each offer includes: Offer A has both, Offer C has a financing contingency only, and cash Offer B has neither. A teaching device — not a prediction of any seller's choice.
Sources
Zillow Research data (opens in a new tab) · Redfin Data Center downloads (opens in a new tab). Links go to each provider's data page, not to a specific file.
Read the research
The Invisible Market: What Real Estate Offer Data Can Reveal sets out the analysis, definitions and limitations in full.