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The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its annual report. The 2020 Internet Crime Report includes information from 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime—an increase of more than 300,000 complaints from 2019—and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion. State-specific statistics have also been released and can be found within the 2020 Internet Crime Report and in the accompanying 2020 State Reports.

As home buyers already know full well, the residential real estate market has been on a wild tear for the past few years—and the pandemic has pushed things to new, uncharted extremes. Buyers who had been cooped up indoors for months rushed into the market seeking larger homes in suburban and even remote locations. They were spurred on by record-low mortgage interest rates. And what have those masses of would-be buyers found? A fiercely competitive housing market marked by soaring prices and not nearly enough homes to go around.

As the country battled the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020, a record number of internet fraud complaints were reported to the FBI.

According to the FBI’s 2020 Internet Crime Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 791,790, complaints with reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion last year. This is up from $3.5 billion in reported losses in 2019.

Key Highlights
Eighteen percent of Generation X buyers purchased a multigenerational home.
Twenty percent of younger millennial homebuyers are unmarried, while 22% of older boomers are single women buyers.
Two percent of all buyers and sellers are in Generation Z.

The average sale-to-list price ratio shot up to 100.1% nationwide, marking the first time on record the typical home has sold above its list price.

Overall housing inventory plummeted 43% in January compared with the same month last year, according to a recent realtor.com® report. New listings were down 23% year over year.