There is a real curiosity about who the buyers are, yet there isn’t much information available about the demographic trends. So I thought this was an interesting factoid.
My YouTube video of the listing in 4S Ranch has been seen 363 times, which is a good sample size and quite a bit above normal – which means the extra traffic was from the video being in the listing. I choose to mark the box on YouTube that my videos aren’t for kids, so I miss the Under-18 group, which is ok. Yet, you’d think there would still be some variety among the viewers.
But the buyer pool in 4S Ranch – a typical newer tract neighborhood with good schools – is very consistent:
I don’t know how accurate their analytics are, but the 35-44 age group is similar to what I saw in person.
I’ve joined the San Diego Association of Realtors, and have dual citizenship for the time being. Though the SDAR and the NSDCAR allegedly have a data-sharing agreement where all realtors in the county have access to the same information, there are some discrepancies.
Today’s listing counts between La Jolla and Carlsbad:
NSDCAR
Actives: 341
Pendings: 369
SDAR
Actives: 332
Pendings: 333
It appears that NSDCAR and the CRMLS have some of the townhouses and attached homes included, so I’m going to use the SDAR counts from now on. Either way though, the market is hot – and should get hotter as the spring season really kicks in!
Of those, 40% or 18.6 million individuals are in the United States.
This means that about 7.6% of the U.S. adult population are millionaires.
Which indicates that approximately 14% of U.S. households are in the millionaire club
With a median wealth of $65,904 for an adult in the U.S., $1,000,000 represents 1517% of the median.
The annual increase in global wealth per adult was 2.6%.
After the U.S at 40%, the next highest 5 countries for millionaires are China 10%, Japan 6%, United Kingdom 5%, Germany 5%, and France 4%.
These top six countries represent 70% of the world’s millionaires.
If you’re a millionaire, you are in the top 0.6% of wealth for the world’s population.
The nine cities with the most millionaires, in decreasing order are Tokyo, New York City, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Beijing, Osaka, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
Everyone says that inventory is low because potential sellers don’t want people in their house during covid……but that’s not stopping the buyers! The showing counts are rising quickly and more people are looking – maybe more than ever for early March:
The competition among buyers is increasing daily, yet the number of homes coming on the market is still well behind previous years, creating an imbalance of gigantic proportions – twice as many lookers to buy 18% fewer listings than last year:
San Diego County Number of New Listings, January + February Combined
Year
New Listings of SDCo Detached-Homes
2013
5,148
2014
5,533
2015
5,834
2016
5,832
2017
5,195
2018
5,328
2019
5,658
2020
4,925
2021
4,035
This year we were 26% below the average of the previous 8 years!
The extraordinary demand mixed with fewer properties is causing everything to get bid up.
In past years, any defects or concerns might limit the number of buyers, and affect the value. These days, it just means you’ll have less than ten offers. The flipper paid $911,500 for this in November, listed for $1,089,000, got seven offers and two bid it up to $1,300,000:
To say it’s the Wild Wild West out here is putting it lightly, and how realtors handle multiple offers is the primary reason. There isn’t a standard way to handle a bidding war – and heck, we don’t even agree on what is confidential, and what isn’t. Here is the variety of opinions from a FB thread:
Even when presented with a copy of the actual verbiage from our contracts, she comments, “Wrong”.
Let’s go around the horn with the automated valuation models.
Zillow says that their zestimate is within 1.9% of being right on price with the on-market homes, which sounds really good until you realize what that means.
Their zestimates of the OFF-MARKET homes are way off – especially in this market:
Once we listed for $1,599,000, they kept their zestimate at the $1,336,035, but after we received six offers that were all over list price and accepted one at $1,770,000 – and raised the price accordingly – then Zillow bumped their zestimate by $352,658:
You sure you want to sell your house to them for the off-market zestimate?
Redfin said they didn’t have enough information to generate a value when they saw my initial $1,599,000, but then they came around once the list price was raised to $1,770,000:
The other automated valuation models aren’t any better, but at least they don’t cheat:
