35% of people who bought a home last year said they made an offer without first seeing it in person, according to a late-2017 survey commissioned by to Redfin. That's up from 33% in May 2017, and 19% in June 2016.

The survey was conducted in November and December 2017, which included responses from 1,503 people who purchased a home in the previous 12 months. Today's report is the final issue of a three-part series on the results of the survey. The first and second reports focused on politics and the housing market.

Millennial home buyers were even more likely to make an offer sight-unseen, with 45% in November and 41% in May saying they had done so. These results likely reflect millennials' comfort relying on information they find online about homes for sale, neighborhoods they might not have visited in person, and the home-buying process in general.

More than half (57%) of respondents who bought a home in Los Angeles last year made an offer sight-unseen. The prevalence of foreign investors in L.A. may have played a role in sight-unseen offers' popularity there. The market-by-market breakdown below shows that the trend was also driven by buyers in other competitive California metros, with 46% in San Diego and 44% in San Francisco having done so.

Metro Area
 Portion of Successful Buyers
Who Said They Made an Offer
on a Home They Hadn't Seen in
Person
Los Angeles
 57%
San Diego
 46%
San Francisco
 44%
Chicago
 38%
Austin
 35%
Denver
 33%
Washington, D.C.
 32%
Phoenix
 31%
Portland
 30%
Sacramento
 30%
Baltimore
 28%
Dallas
 27%
Boston
 25%
Seattle
 19%

People who can't get in to tour a home right away because they're busy or relocating from out of town often rely on tools like Redfin 3D Walkthrough and FaceTime® to explore the home itself, and the vast array of statistics, reviews, maps and articles online that can help a prospective buyer understand what it's like to live in a neighborhood. However, in the case of offering sight-unseen, the agent can be a buyer's greatest resource.

Angela Hunter, a Redfin agent in Omaha, worked with a family relocating from Jacksonville, Florida to Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska.

"This family had a only a few weeks to find a home and they did not want to live on-base or rent," Hunter said. "Because the wife was 8 months pregnant at the time, they needed a move-in ready home within 20 minutes of the base. While conducting video tours with them, I was very careful to explain things that they would not be able to experience virtually, like the sounds, smells, and textures. I pointed out flaws that are hard to detect through video so that nothing would be a surprise to them once they visited in person. It's not the easiest way to shop for a home, but together we found the perfect match."