Another indicator that the local market is holding up and sellers aren’t desperate – an excerpt:
Nahjla Wehbe Dipp, a Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty agent, said buyers seem more receptive to not overpricing their homes than a year ago. She said another reason sellers might not want to reduce their asking price could be declining numbers of homes for sale.
Home inventory increased as sales started to slow last year around August, but any extra houses on the market seem to have already sold. There were 6,491 homes for sale in September, said the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors, down from 7,824 at the same time last year.
“There’s just less for buyers to pick from,” Dipp said.
The number of price reductions in a given month can correlate with a hot market. For instance, in San Diego County just 12.1 percent of listed homes had a reduction in 2016, and an average of 11.6 percent in 2017.
Even when a market is red hot, there are reductions. A selling tactic, not usually recommended by most real estate agents, is to price a home higher and then come down so the buyer feels like they are getting a deal.
San Diego still had the most reductions of any of California’s large home markets. Riverside metro area had 16.5 percent of homes with a price reduction in September, followed by 16 percent in Los Angeles and 15.3 percent in San Francisco.
The median home price in San Diego County in September was $570,000, said CoreLogic data provided by DQNews, down from $575,000 at the same time last year.
Double-digit increases can’t last forever – but could home prices plateau for years? It will probably depend on mortgage rates, and having enough reasonable sellers who are willing to take the same $ as what the last guy got.
From our friends at JBREC:
Price appreciation has slowed across every major housing market, in what we are coining the Great Price Deceleration.
The biggest deceleration occurred in San Jose: Last year, resale prices in San Jose were up 20% YOY! Today, prices are down 6% YOY—a deceleration of 26%. Last year, San Jose was frenzied with less than one month of supply and very strong job growth. Builders were selling homes faster than they could build them. In the second half of 2018, the San Jose market slowed substantially due to affordability issues, but conditions have stabilized this year.
Top California markets, Seattle, and Las Vegas have experienced the most price deceleration. Home buyer affordability remains weak, even with historically low 4% mortgage rates, and homes are sitting on the market longer (especially higher-priced homes). We are seeing more buyer demand in markets such as Seattle, where home builders have adjusted prices.
Markets in the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast have been far less frenzied this cycle and have had much steadier prices. These markets are typically lower risk in their fundamentals (more affordable, less risk of oversupply, and steady job growth). Raleigh-Durham has experienced the least deceleration in price from last year. Resale prices gained 7% YOY last year, and today they are up 6%, a 1% price deceleration.
Nationally, we expect resale prices to gain 2% through 2022, cumulatively, but there are huge disparities by region and metro.
We explore all top housing markets each month in our Regional Analysis and Forecast report for our paying research clients. If you are interested in becoming a research client, please reach out to our team of expert analysts.
Rich’s latest graphs are out, and this inventory history above shows how relatively few homes are for sale locally.
The median detached-home list price for the county today is $849,000!
He did mention a reader’s theory that in the era of online search portals, the inventory has become more efficient. Better-educated buyers are making faster decisions these days, which keeps the inventory counts down. But the hot buys have always sold quickly, and the over-abundance of data could be dumbing down the decision-making.
He mentioned the slightly-negative turn in pricing last month, but I like these two graphs above. The pricing trend is going to bounce around – as long as we have sales counts close to previous years, we’ll be fine.
Here are graphs from one of the more bullish real estate prognosticators:
Steve is a residential real estate expert who specializes in market trends. He has been in the industry for over 25 years, first as an agent and then developing his own 500-agent real estate firm. Steve now helps producers achieve their true potential. He authors a monthly informational presentation for top professionals titled, “Keeping Current Matters” (also known as KCM), and is seen as a leading industry thought leader.
The worrisome spike last month did flatten out, but it does make you wonder if we should adjust our sights.
I agree with Rich that the months of active inventory will probably be rising from now on. But if the coastal market had 3 or 4 months of active inventory, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Rancho Santa Fe is 7+ and doing fine.
This is the Deputy Chief Economist at Freddie Mac:
It is incredible to see the trend change in every category around 2016 – as if there was a societal shift that gave permission to get back in the game.
Maybe that’s when the Bank of Mom and Dad kicked in, and their distribution of wealth made it possible to buy even though prices were soaring?
Or the resurgence from lower-end buyers enabled the move-up market?
Hot head talk: I've sold $6 billion in real estate—here are 5 brutally honest things I've had to tell homeowners cnb.cx/2RZubbR
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