All that matters is whether the bubble going to burst.
Four reasons why it won’t:
No easy money – buyers have to be solid qualifiers.
Foreclosures are extinct.
Everyone has loads of equity (except 2021 buyers).
No easy place to move to.
For the bubble to burst, we would need an event to drive down prices. Sellers would have to panic and cheap-sell for less to start a downward cycle. Even an earthquake probably wouldn’t be enough.
Thanks to the readers who sent in this article – and it makes you wonder how many offers any house for sale would get if listing agents didn’t shut down the showings so quickly:
CITRUS HEIGHTS, Calif. (KTXL) — A Citrus Heights home in a quiet cul-de-sac received 122 offers in one weekend on the market.
The 1,400 square feet home has three bedrooms, two baths and a spacious backyard with a swimming pool and an asking price of $399,900.00.
“People would think that it was underpriced. It was not underpriced. It was straight on with the comps,” said Deb Brittan, the listing agent for the property. “I had hoped, I thought, maybe if we get 20 offers that would be amazing.”
Barry and Anita Jackier are the sellers of the Citrus Heights home.
“We had this little friendly wager going. I’m like, ‘I think we’re going to get eight offers,” Anita Jackier said.
“I said 10,” Barry Jackier said.
They all underestimated the number of offers, by a lot.
They received 122 offers in one weekend.
“That’s 121 people who didn’t get a house. And that’s kind of heartbreaking in this market to think that there are so many buyers out there. And if you don’t have an agent that understands how to put a strategic offer in on a house and get it accepted, you’re just out burning your gas and a lot of emotional turmoil because of the nature of our market currently,” Brittan said.
Brittan says the highest offer was above $500,000, but that was not the winning offer. There were other factors to consider.
The couple is buying a home in Idaho.
They need time for the escrow to close on that home, so one big factor was they needed a buyer to wait until that happens before moving in.
“I’d like to think that the buyer that was supposed to have gotten the house, has gotten the house,” Brittan said.
The selling price of the home was in the mid-$400,000 range.
“We have so many great memories. And that’s going to be hard to let go of,” Barry Jackier said.
“But you know what I’m excited about is now another family gets to have a blank palate to make all those memories on. We are keeping those memories and they have an opportunity to start their own,” Anita Jackier said.
The couple said they felt called by God to move to Idaho and from that perspective, it’s a miracle they were able to find a home there.
“That house was on the market for three hours,” Anita Jackier told FOX40.
“So I don’t know that it’s going to slow down any time soon. And I don’t know what it’s going to take to slow it down,” Brittan said.
Yesterday’s Case-Shiller Index was a reflection of November, December, and January market data. Here’s a local supplement to help map out what’s coming – and this is only through February:
This was in a fairly tight range of $400/sf to $450/sf for a couple of years. But six months ago, this metric went ballistic, and in that short of time it’s catapulted well into the $500s!
The intertubes go crazy about what a racist Eric Clapton was, but let’s consider the full spectrum.
He was such a heroin addict that he didn’t leave his house for three years.
He was so madly in love with Pattie Boyd that she finally divorced his best friend George Harrison and married him. They divorced ten years later.
Coming off the heroin trip, be became so addicted to alcohol that he couldn’t finish a concert.
He was so drunk at one show that he went off on a racist bender. I don’t forgive him for that, but let’s don’t trash the rest of his 50 years of contribution just because of one bad night. He has received 18 Grammys and is the only three-time inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It’s more than just the trendy areas – it’s red-hot everywhere.
Every metro area on the list is having substantial gains in their index, which means there has been a psychological shift happening coast-to-coast on how human beings feel about their homes. With the real-estate-selling business being one of the last totally-free markets left, it’s going to run wild for a while.
The #1 market, Phoenix, hit +1.9% month-over-month, which is incredible for a January reading.
It should put them on track for a +20% to +25% annual gain in 2021, and we won’t be far behind.
I think we might catch them!
San Diego had positive gains straight through the Covid-19 era last year, and now we have 2% monthly gains in our sights for the next few months. Look how that compares to the 2019 readings:
“The strong price gains that we observed in the last half of 2020 continued into the f irst month of the new year. In January 2021, the National Composite Index rose by 11.2% compared to its year-ago levels,” says Craig J. Lazzara,Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P DJI. “The trend of accelerating prices that began in June 2020 has now reached its eighth month and is also reflected in the 10- and 20-City Composites (up 10.9% and 11.1%, respectively). The market’s strength is broadly-based: all 20 cities rose, and all 20 cities gained more in the 12 months ended in January 2021 than they had gained in the 12 months ended in December 2020.
“January’s performance is particularly impressive in historical context. The National Composite’s 11.2% gain is the highest recorded since February 2006, just one month shy of 15 years ago. In more than 30 years of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data, January’s year-over-year change is comfortably in the top decile. That strength is reflected across all 20 cities. January’s price gains in every city are above that city’s median level, and rank in the top quartile of all reports in 18 cities.
“January’s data remain consistent with the view that COVID has encouraged potential buyers to move from urban apartments to suburban homes. This demand may represent buyers who accelerated purchases that would have happened anyway over the next several years. Alternatively, there may have been a secular change in preferences, leading to a shift in the demand curve for housing. Future data will be required to analyze this question
“Phoenix’s 15.8% increase led all cities for the 20th consecutive month, with Seattle (+14.3%) and San Diego (+14.2%) close behind. Although prices were strongest in the West (+11.7%), gains were impressive in every region.”
This year’s orange line has plateaued. It’s been in the 70% range all month, meaning there has been 70% more showings each week than there were during the first week of the year.
Even though it’s twice as much, it mirrors the 2019 trend that the spring selling season is underway, and I think we can assume that every buyer who is thinking about moving in 2021 is out looking at homes.
The buyer pool is full, and engaged. Sellers, no need to wait!
We’re at the point where any of the year-over-year comparisons will be hampered by the initial shock of the pandemic in March-May of 2020. But the number of active listings was steady through March, 2020, so let’s compare the $$/sf on the list prices to see how much they’ve gone up in 12 months:
NSDCC Detached-Home Listings, End of March
Price Range
2020 Actives
Avg. LP$/sf
2021 Actives
Avg. LP$/sf
% Chg in $/sf
0-$1.0M
40
$475/sf
7
$478/sf
+1%
$1.0M – $1.5M
114
$528/sf
30
$648/sf
+23%
$1.5M – $2.0M
126
$660/sf
38
$727/sf
+10%
$2.0M – $3.0M
163
$734/sf
54
$839/sf
+14%
$3.0M+
244
$1,165/sf
212
$1,379/sf
+18%
Rates were about 1/4% higher last March, so about the same and sellers don’t care much about those.
But with the Under-$1.0M market now virtually non-existent, the $1.0M to $1.5M market is now our entry level and where first-timers, move-uppers, and downsizers are all in fierce competition!
This idea has to rank a 10 out of 10 on the kooky scale……would homeowners agree? An excerpt:
It’s expensive to fight the sea. It’s expensive not to do so. When property values plummet, so do property taxes. But right now property values here are still high, and State Sen. Ben Allen wants to put that value to use before it’s gone.
That’s why the 43-year-old Democrat has proposed legislation to create a revolving loan program, allowing California counties and communities to purchase vulnerable coastal properties. The goal would then be to rent those properties out, either to the original homeowner or someone else, and use that money to pay off the loan until the property is no longer safe to live in.
Think of it like a city-run Airbnb, where the profits go to making sure nobody is left picking up the full tab when the Pacific comes to collect.
It’s a strategy that’s never been tried at such a large scale, and its implementation would come with plenty of questions, policy experts say. But there’s hope in various parts of the country that the legislation passes, putting to test a buy-to-rent strategy that could offer a more permanent solution to a growing problem.
At its core, Allen’s proposal is a buyout program — a government-subsidized effort to limit the state’s longer-term exposure to sea level rise.
Within the next 30 years, $8 billion to $10 billion of existing property in California is expected to be underwater, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. An additional $6 billion to $10 billion will be at risk during high tide.
“The magnitude of the potential impacts mean that the state cannot afford to indefinitely delay taking steps to prepare,” the report warns. “Waiting too long to initiate adaptation efforts likely will make responding effectively more difficult and costly.”
Communities have three options for dealing with that threat: They can defend those properties using sea walls and buffering beaches; they can learn to live with higher waters; or they can retreat and move to higher ground.
The last option is often the least popular, says Julia Stein, a project director at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.
“That’s just not a conversation that a lot of coastal communities want to have,” she says.
And when the conversation does come up, one of the first questions to arise is cost.
Take Del Mar, a low-lying upscale community north of San Diego. Residents there have been in a years-long fight with the state over the term “managed retreat.” The state wants the city to consider retreating from a particularly vulnerable area. Problem is: The combined market value of the homes in that area is more than $1.5 billion.
