Thank you for the tremendous support! You generously bought 65 pies and donated another $3,300 to the cause. It will allow Mama’s Kitchen to provide 2,017 medically-tailored meals to San Diegans who are vulnerable to malnutrition due to critical illness.
A special thanks to Brian for donating $1,000!
We are eternally grateful for your support.
Yesterday I was delivering pies throughout North County, and visiting with our great supporters – who were mostly past clients. Predictably, the conversation turns to real estate, and observations about what’s going on in the market, now and in the future.
In case the subject comes up at your Thanksgiving, here are things we discussed:
The blog is picking up momentum, which hopefully means more people are looking to get better-educated about the market conditions, which is encouraging:
Thank you for being here! I appreciate all of you and Happy Thanksgiving!
Try out Grandma Klinge’s pumpkin bread (mastered by Natalie) from the Compass cookbook:
Today’s rates with no points
The Spring Selling Season could get a real boost if mortgage rates stay in the 5s.
The Fed has been telegraphing their intentions for months now, and at this point, there can’t be anyone who thinks the Fed won’t keep raising their Fed Funds rate – at least for their next two meetings. Mortgage lenders have to be pricing in the anticipated future increases, yes?
After some tepid inflation news last week, mortgage rates came down a 1/2%, and they have stayed there, which makes me think that there was already too much buffer priced in – and there has to be some extra left knowing that the Fed has more work to do.
But just in case, go out and buy a house today so you can get a 5-something rate!
Checking-in on the Buffalo snowstorm:
“But that’s my own fault.”? https://t.co/g7zWZg8GXM
— Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman) November 21, 2022
I’ve been on a fortunate lucky streak this year, and it’s not going to last forever so if you don’t mind, I’m going to enjoy it while lasts. More than anything, I want to give hope to sellers and buyers that you can make smart and friendly transactions these days.
The negativity should be questioned!
The reason for breaking down the active and pending listings by zip code is to give the readers a closer look at their neighborhood stats. A healthy market is when there are two actives to every pending.
There are a couple areas (in red) where the number of pendings have dropped significantly. But in six of the more-expensive areas, there are the same number of pendings now as there were last month:
All we have to do is muddle through the next three months!
In 2020, we had 400+ pendings from June 22nd to November 30th – with a peak of 491 pendings on September 7th.
There have been 80 NSDCC closings in November, which should mean we should get to at least 100 sales for the month. But with only 108 pendings today, the monthly sales in December and January sales will probably be under 100. Even though there are 393 active listings, sellers haven’t been too interested in adjusting their pricing strategies, and most will just wait it out until some unknown date in the future.
Another lady was walking by on Wednesday when we were doing the photos of the new listing. She confirmed that we were selling the house, and replied, “It’s a TERRIBLE time to sell”.
She came back yesterday, and when she heard that I already had three offers, she said, “Well I guess it’s good to get out, because I heard that PRICES ARE GOING TO GO DOWN FOR FIVE YEARS!”
The future is somewhat unpredictable, so let’s just look at how sellers have been operating in 2022.
How do the sellers feel about getting more aggressive about their list prices? If prices were going to decline for the next five years, there should be some evidence already.
Here are the weekly averages of LP/sf by price range in 2022:
Generally speaking, at least 3/4s of the sellers would rather stick to their price and not sell.
I don’t expect that trend to change.
If it were to change, it would be in the off-season when the stragglers who didn’t sell in the spring/summer are motivated enough to accept a lowball deal. But you won’t see it much in the list prices, it will only happen for those who are willing to make low offers.
I’m still doing the frenzy format. Sell the first weekend with multiple offers!
Plus, thoughts on a market floor (tight group of recent comps with a upward trend in pricing).
Our listing on Oakridge closed escrow today at 27% over the list price!
We had 18 written offers, and only one of them was cash. There were 17 parties were willing to pay the list price or higher, even with mortgage rates around 7%!
I did what was in effect a reverse offer and raised the list price from $995,000 to $1,150,000 once offers started coming in. Then we asked those who were willing to pay at least that much to submit their highest and best offer.
Five parties were willing to pay over $1,200,000, and the winner paid $1,265,000!
The pic above was the street view when we rolled up in February. It took until the middle of October to list it because we waited until everything was perfect and ready to sell – in this market, you have to!
Here’s me discussing whether it was under-priced:
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The new listing went active on the MLS at 4:30pm yesterday, and by this morning there have already been 1,700+ views – less than a week before Thanksgiving! You can’t tell me that the market is dead!
