San Diego is the #1 area that homeowners don’t want to leave! Don’t you get the feeling that we are going to out-perform every other real estate market in America for a long time to come?
Today we have 2,293 active listings of attached and detached homes in the county – population 3.3 million!
The active (unsold) listings keep stacking up, and the pendings are drifting off – which means sellers are content to let their price ride, rather than adjust. They’re not going to give it away!
NEWS FLASH: We are running out of time. Next Saturday is July 1st!
In the end we will call it seasonal, but this is what happens in a normal market. The sellers keep pushing on price, and it wears out the buyers – and soon everyone will be waiting for next year.
P.S. The median LP is $3,750,000, and one quarter of the active listings are priced at $6,497,000 or higher!
Although the San Diego metro market is leading the nation in YoY inventory reductions, the active (unsold) listings are piling up in the La Jolla-to-Carlsbad market (above). It means more sellers aren’t realistic about their price, and the best time to sell a house will run out before they adjust enough.
In the end we will call it seasonal, but this is what happens in a normal market. The sellers keep pushing on price, and it wears out the buyers – and soon everyone will be waiting for next year!
Today, we have the highest number of active listings of the year, and the lowest number of pendings since the first week of February. There were only 17 new pendings since last Monday, which is the lowest weekly total since the beginning of January.
Were buyers on vacation? Graduations? Or just dissatisfied with the current offerings?
These charts and graphs get updated on the first of the month, so let’s take in the latest data. Everyone laments the general lack of inventory, but can we break it down further?
Yes indeed – and let’s note that the higher-end inventory was bustling during the pandemic which helped fuel the insane frenzy conditions. But look how the number of higher-end listings has cooled off now.
The affluent buyers have never been so frustrated!
The stacking up of unsold listings took a breather this week.
It was the best week of May for both the lowest number of new listings (43) and most new pendings (37), which is remarkable, considering it was a graduation/holiday week for many. Hopefully it’s a sign that the next two weeks will be very productive!
As long as the pendings count stays in a tight range (like it has since February), and the higher-end market keeps flowing, there aren’t any big concerns. The listings and sales below aren’t directly related because some of the closed sales were listings from 2022, but it shows that the higher-end market is doing well:
Generally-speaking, the NSDCC pricing has been fairly steady too:
Grab a house before you go on vacation!
The listings are starting to stack up.
There is a fine balance where more supply would be soaked up by the excess demand. Boy, it’s a fine line though because the inventory hasn’t been blowing up:
Feb: 191
Mar: 227
Apr: 219
May: 161
At this rate, the new-listings count in May will probably be in the 230-250 range which would be in line with expectations. It would be natural to have more listings in April and May than in March due to the 2023 market conditions improving so rapidly, but maybe the euphoria has only begun to draw more sellers into the market….and they want all the money, apparently!
If the new listings aren’t blowing up, yet the active inventory is growing, it means price is the issue.
Of the 161 NSDCC listings this month, only 26 have have gone pending.
The inventory has been so low this year that any excess hasn’t been noticeable….until now.
In a hot market, the additional listings will get picked up by the stronger demand. But there will be a point when excess listings start stacking up.
You can’t blame it on the market either – it’s been hotter than expected. Here’s how the first quarter compared to previous first quarters, and it has picked up since then:
Having 60% of the first-quarter listings already close escrow this year feels more like the frenzy years – and it’s probably due to the inventory being HALF of what it used to be pre-covid. Even in 2009 when prices had plummeted and it felt like nobody wanted to sell, we still had 1,422 listings in the first quarter! This year’s 607 is a real aberration and will likely be a harbinger of things to come.
Having the number of actives rising slightly probably isn’t going to change much – other than having more sellers continue their staredown with buyers, hoping that the last showing might be the lucky winners.
Last April was peak frenzy, and a main contributor was the lack of inventory….and there were 48.2% fewer listings last month? Holy Cow! This is primetime selling season and if there aren’t homes for sale now, how much worse will it be the rest of the year?
Here’s how it looks between La Jolla and Carlsbad:
Remember when inventory plunged in April, 2020 because nobody wanted to let anyone in their house?
I’d love to go back to those days!
While other metro areas have YoY inventory exploding, we still have enough demand to cause the active-inventory count to decline year-over-year:
Of course the minute I say that the inventory is going to stay low, it takes off. The normal graphs aren’t working so I drew the changes on last week’s graph above.
The number of actives increased by 8% in one week!
You don’t see anybody giving them away either, so we’ll see if the demand is strong enough to soak up some, or all, of the surge.
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CA DRE #01527365, CA DRE #00873197
