Inventory Watch

The active inventory is increasing!

We’ve been hoping to identify the perfect amount of additional homes for sale that would create more sales without scaring buyers back to the sidelines with shock and awe. I have guessed that the demand would digest a 10% to 15% increase, and maybe 20% without much difficulty. Now the number of active listings are 34% above last year, and the pendings have been flat for the last couple of weeks.

Likely outcomes:

  • Buyers wait longer, hoping it will be better/different later.
  • Sales slow.
  • The prime selling season ends sooner than expected.

Thankfully, the sellers aren’t going to give them away so it will feel like a standoff. Only the buyers and sellers with high motivations will dare to transact when the temptation to wait longer is getting stronger.

If it gets better/different later, it won’t be by much. There might be fewer homes selling over list, and more deals for the buyers who can dig them out.

But that’s it.

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Inventory Watch

The NSDCC houses for sale have had a median list price over $4,000,000 all year.

How is the upper half of the market performing?

While the $2,000,000 to $4,000,000 market has seen continued upward pressure on pricing (click below on more…), the $4,000,000+ list pricing has been correcting – and it’s working!

The average LP/sf has dropped 10% since January, and the number of active (unsold) listings is trickling up. But the average days-on-market is settling down, and the number of pendings look great. There have already been 42 NSDCC sales closed this year over $4,000,000!

Fun fact:

NSDCC Active Listings Priced Over $10,000,000 Today: 46

NSDCC Listings Sold Over $10,000,000, Last 12 Months: 43

It is a very affluent marketplace!

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Inventory Watch

There have been 12% more listings YoY in the first two months of 2024, and buyers are responding!

Closed SFR sales between La Jolla and Carlsbad are +20% YoY in the first two months of the year!

It’s why the number of active listings (red line above) isn’t exploding, AND there have been 88 new pendings in the last two weeks – which is about twice the pace we had in January. The median LP of those 88 pendings is $2.5 million, which means pricing will be at least +10% higher than last year. Wow!

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Inventory Watch

This year’s inventory is looking a lot like last year, with a few more listings hanging around unsold.

NSDCC Total Number of Listings, Jan 1 through Feb 20

2023: 355

2024: 395

How’s the pricing? Here are the weekly quartiles for 2023 and 2024:

It looks like the market is settling in for a ride that’s similar to the one we had in 2023!

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Inventory Watch

In the last week, the number of NSDCC active listings shot up by 12%, and the number of pendings dropped 10%, which at first glance looked like a bunch of escrows blew up.

But it was more due to the number of closings. There were 35 escrows that closed last week, bringing the February total up to 83 already. Last February there were only 112 closings, which we should easily beat.

NSDCC sales are 14% higher than last year, and we’ll have a few more late-reporters to add this year:

NSDCC Listings and Sales Between Jan 1 – Feb 15

Here are Bill’s latest graphs. It’s incredible to see the comparison to 2019 – the active inventory was down 57.7% but sales were only off -19.5%:

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Inventory Watch

The Super Bowl is done, and the 2024 Selling Season is under way!

Judging by the graph above, this year will be as hot as last year!

Look at the consistency this year too:

NSDCC Weekly New Listings and New Pendings

Whenever we have 125 new listings, and 99 are going into escrow too, it’s about as healthy as it gets.

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Inventory Watch

The number of January listings has blown by everyone’s expectations, and is now up to 229, which is 12% higher than in January, 2023 – and the count isn’t done yet.

All we know for sure is that more sellers wanted to get an early start on moving this year.

If that tendency holds up over the next few months and the YoY inventory grows by 10% or more each month, the market could get more frenzied, because the buyers are responding too. The number of pendings is 14% higher than they were last year at this time!

My theory is that 10% more inventory is easily absorbed and really won’t be that noticeable. It’s when the inventory is growing at 20% or more that buyers may wonder what’s going on – and be tempted to pause, and/or get more picky, if that is possible.

Congratulations to Joe – the winner of the four Padres tickets!

Contest to Guess the Total Number of NSDCC January Listings

142 Anne M

157 Skip

160 doughboy

170 Dale

174 SurfRider

176 LifeIsRadInCbad

180 Kingside

188 Stephanie R.

189 Chris

190 Tom

192 Sara G.

196 Derek

200 Curtis

208 Rob Dawg

210 Bode

213 Shadash

217 Nick

222 Majeed

223 Joe

The way it’s going, the 2024 Selling Season should be as hot, or hotter than it was last year!

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Inventory Watch

In our previous reading last Monday, the pendings count had jumped 20% – and this week it popped another 15%! Today’s actual count of 140 pendings is now ahead of last year, which had an early start to the selling season!  At this point, this year looks the same!

This morning’s count of January listings between La Jolla and Carlsbad is 204, which means Joe has the contest for Padres tickets in the bag. Having slightly more inventory than last year should mean more sales!

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Inventory Watch

During the frenzy, the market had waves of new pendings happen in the same week or two, as if there is a home-buying karma that sweeps a bunch of buyers into action at the same time. It’s probably more due to them digesting the new listings, and after a couple of weeks of 2024, it appears buyers are acting!

The NSDCC pendings count rose from 102 to 122 this week, a 20% pop!

In the graph above, you can see that last year the market was cooking by mid-February. When the actives and pending are stable, it means that the deals are closing as fast as the new listings are coming on!

Here is the history from the last few years:

2023:

2022:

2021:

2019/2020:

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Inventory Watch

NSDCC Listings, January 1-15

2023: 100

2024: 99

You could say that the 2024 inventory is tracking very closely to last year’s numbers! There will be extras added to this year’s count, so comparatively, we can guess that the 2024 count will be 110-115 or so.

But look at the difference in the graph above.

Last year got off to a fast start as the number of pendings picked up right away….but not this year. The actives are there, but they aren’t flying into escrow like last year.

Our open house had a similar result. lots of attendees, glowing remarks, hints of offers, but we’re not in escrow yet. I only saw a handful of other open houses, but the results looked the same – lots of people milling about, but that’s about it.

A slower start probably means that the inventory is still very thin, which makes it hard to compare. Mortgage rates are about the same as they were last January, so that’s not it – but the rate expectation is way different, with Fed moves expected over the next few months. It could cause buyers to be very deliberate in the early going.

Hopefully, the pendings count will increase over the next few days as the fruits from the weekend are logged. But the actives are surging ahead for now.

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