The local market is setting up for an extended period of quiet.
Buyers continue to use big cash deposits and are financing the rest at such low rates that their resulting payments should be very manageable. They must be in for the long haul.
Down payments of detached homes purchased in the last 30 days around the south side of NSDCC (La Jolla, Del Mar, Solana Beach, RSF, and Carmel Valley):
| Down Pmts Used | FHA | 10% | 15% | 20% | 25%-49% | 50%-99% | All-Cash | Total |
| # of | 1 | 3 | 2 | 18 |
There were 77% of the buyers who used at least 25% down payments in the last month.
The statistics on the 103 that closed:
Average SP = $1,435,771
Median SP = $1,200,000
Average square footage was 3,290sf
Average cost-per-sf was $472/sf (figured by MLS)
Average days on market: 106
Average SP/LP: 95%
There were 12 trust/estate sales, 4 short sales, 7 REO sales, and 23 sellers who sold for less than they paid (or 70 that sold for more than they paid).
97% with 20% or more down;
79% with 25% or more down;
35% with 50% or more down.
Those numbers are incredible, and just go to show how abnormal this market truly is. Only deep pockets are playing, and the standard move-up crowd is MIA. Welcome to the “new normal”.
The “new normal” looks just like the “old normal” to a fossil like me.
#2 FTW!
You don’t need to be that old to remember when buyers needed to have accumulated a reasonable amount of money. You need to go back a long way to find such a large fraction of cash buyers, though.
Went over to Standard Pacs Ballasario in Stonebridge yesterday. They had a preview last week, cars were parked all along the three blocks around the models, we didn’t bother to get out of he car. This past weekend was the official first week. A little less busy so we did go in to take a look. Overall very nicely done. No more cheap cost cutting measures like some of the offerings from builders during the recession. 3 out of the 5 homes released were sold the first day, from $1 mil to $1.1 mil.