Would you buy a home without ever stepping foot inside it?

There are so many tools real estate search tools around these days that it’s become not just possible, but actually quite common, to buy a property without ever setting foot in it.

Such tools include homebuying algorithms for investors, virtual tours of office buildings and condos, and digital walkthroughs for foreign buyers.

But even if you’re not a multi-millionaire or managing a billion-dollar trust fund, Seattle brokerage Redfin says you wouldn’t be considered crazy for buying a home sight unseen.

According to a new SurveyMonkey study sponsored by Redfin, as many as one in five Americans in the past two years have made an offer on a home they’ve never set foot in. The Redfin poll was based on a survey of 2,100 recent buyers, and found that those buying luxury homes in the $750,000+ range were the most likely to make a bid blind, with 53 percent of buyers in that range admitting so. Also likely to buy a home sight unseed were millennials, with 30 percent saying they’d made an offer on a home they’d never stepped foot in.

Of course, it isn’t possible to compare those numbers with historical norms. What we can say though is that it’s not surprising younger people are more likely to be comfortable searching for, and buying a home, only using online tools, especially if they’re relocating to another city for work. It’s not so clear why wealthier buyers choose to buy homes sight unseen, though we can speculate that perhaps such homes have more extravagent marketing plans that include digital walkthroughs etc., hence the skewed numbers.

Besides the trend towards buying homes without stepping foot in them, another takeaway from Redfin’s survey is that buyers are moving away from traditional real estate agents to companies like – you guessed it – Redfin, which boasts a commission structure that’s usually cheaper than traditional brokerages.

Here’s a few more interesting findings from the survey:

• 17% of people who bought a home in the past two years did so without an agent. That’s substantially higher than the most widely cited number reflecting this group’s prevalence, which reports that just 12% of buyers in 2014 purchased without an agent. Among people who bought without an agent, 37% said they didn’t need one because they knew the seller personally.
• 13% of people who sold a home in the past two years did so without the help of an agent. This is in line with the most widely accepted report on this figure, which cites that 12% of sellers in 2014 sold without an agent. The most common reason for selling on one’s own was to save money (61%).
• 37% of people who bought homes with non-Redfin agents said their agent saved them more than $500 via a refund or other type of contribution.2
• Sixty-two percent of Redfin users said they were “very confident” that Redfin.com promptly showed all the homes for sale, compared with 51% of Realtor.com users, 44% of Zillow users, 44% of Trulia users who said the same for those sites.2
• 64% of respondents are open to an alternative to the traditional real estate service and 21% prefer the way traditional agents work.
• 73% of respondents like the idea of saving money on real estate commissions and believe real estate can be more efficient. Just 14% worried that saving money would lower the quality of service.
• 71% percent of people who bought or sold a home with Redfin would recommend their agent to a friend or colleague, compared with 49% of people who bought or sold a home with agents at other brokerages.