Natalie wrote the thoughts above in our most recent newsletter, and others remarked how true it was in their experience too.
She carries the load around the house too. It became obvious this weekend that I’ve never operated the vacuum cleaner before.
You are a phenomenal woman, and I’m honored to be your husband – and glad you are spending your life with me! Happy Birthday Donna!
Here’s another example of how sellers are making decisions these days.
Time to sell the family homestead where the heirs grew up. Bless her heart, their Mom lived there through to the end, just like many around Olde Carlsbad. What a great place to spend the last 60 years of your life!
Like many, the house really hasn’t been touched – it’s all original. How much do you spend to prepare it for sale….if any? There is a quality ocean view…through the power lines. The lot is large enough to split and you can add the ADUs….and be into it for another $1,000,000 to $2,000,000? I sold the house three doors to the north and you can see that they’ve added the ADU. But they paid $452,500 in 1999 – buy right so you don’t mind spending the money.
4030 Sunnyhill Dr., Carlsbad 92008
3 br/2 ba, 1,994sf
YB: 1960
Lot size: 26,100sf (0.60-acre lot)
SP: $2,000,000
As we were getting ready to go on the open market, the sellers were approached by a family friend. My list price was going to be $2,200,000 at the end of April, which is about the time that chaos and uncertainty was really starting to affect the market.
Do you gamble and go on the open market? None of these 1/2-acre lots have sold for a long time, and we speculated that there is some pent-up demand, but at what price? This is a pure fixer which turns off most buyers, but could the builders/flippers be interested? At what price?
Our clients took the sure thing.
I had dreams of the open-house extravaganza of the year, and maybe of the decade, but it was the right move – the uncertainty was too high. I had my hands full with two appraisals, but they came in at value, and we closed as agreed.
Recent JtR buyer sales:
San Diego ranks #34 – you could be happier!
For those potential sellers who are already writing off 2025 and plan to sell in the new year instead, note how the selling season has been starting sooner than ever. Peak pricing last year in Coastal North was in February, and this year it was January (scroll over):
The buyers’ enthusiasm tapers off after March:
If you do everything right, you should sell in the first 2-3 weeks:
Think the additional inventory this year was bad? There will be truckloads next year! Beat the rush and get out early – or just sell now!
The takeaways from the graph above will be different for different people.
Not suggested:
Why is it important to Get Good Help?
The failure rate will be higher this year.
In normal markets, we’ve had a success rate of 60% to 65% of the listings closing escrow successfully. During the frenzy, it was as high as 80%! But look at what we’re faced with now.
NSDCC Total Sales/Total Listings
2024: 1,837/2,831 = 65%
2025: 716/1,549 = 46%
Obviously, this year is incomplete but I did include all of the current pendings to approximate this year’s conditions. It’s unlikely that the success rate will be improving through the second half of 2025.
It’s likely that MOST of the sellers this year will be unsuccessful.
What’s for sure? There will be a load of listings in 2026.
Mom and Dad with sister Kathy
Mom smoked half her life and made it to 90! Pall Mall non-filters for many of those!
This one’s for her:
Almost one-third of last month’s buyers paid over the list price…..for the fourth month in a row! Either sellers are being smart about pricing attractively, or a fair amount of the buyers and buyer-agents haven’t gotten the memo about the tougher market conditions.
Sales and pricing are holding up too.
The median sales price is almost identical to last May, and sales were higher:
Our head cheerleader is back at it.
He is predicting that sales and pricing will increase this year, which is optimistic:
Here are the local YoY comparisons:
It’s been a miracle that sales and pricing this year have kept up with the 2024 numbers. Any Fed rate cuts are going to come too late (September/October) to save the real estate market this year, but hopefully they will provide some juice for the early-2026 market.
I think a pattern is developing.
The first quarter of 2024 and 2025 were hot, then we muddle through the rest of the year. The same will probably happen next year too, where the surge of inventory bogs down the market by the second quarter. There aren’t enough buyers for every listing!
There isn’t anything that price won’t fix, and something has to give.
Either sales or pricing will need to be sacrificed. Or both
Yunnie is like Cramer where if you just do the opposite, the results are better.
I’ll guess that our local sales will finish this year at -6%, and pricing at -3% YoY.
Last week I thought inventory might have peaked for the year?
The dip from the previous week was all from high-end listings, some of which are now being refreshed and coming back on as new listings. Even though the lower-end inventory is rising steadily, at least the actives-to-pendings ratios show where the action is:
Under-$3M: 236 actives/82 pendings = 2.88
Over-$3M: 333 actives/54 pendings = 6.17
The quartiles are at their lowest points of 2025, yet it may not be enough:
Are there reasons for hope? The stock market has regained its losses from Liberation Day (which is huge), rates aren’t going up, and there are plenty of choices for home buyers who have guts. But you need to dig out the deals – they won’t be obvious.
Here’s an example of how home sellers can get jammed up by lower sales in the surrounding area and the market turning. During the frenzy, any lower-priced sales nearby were shrugged off by the anxious buyers who just wanted to get any house at any price. Not now.
Our listing at 29482 Vista Valley was the best custom estate on the golf course when it was built in 1987 – and it still is today. The house across the street – and not on the golf course – sold last June for $1,985,000 so at least I had one comp, although aged.
We hit the open market on January 22nd listed for $2,250,000.
The 2025 market was off to a fast start, and we had good activity – but no offers.
The Gopher Canyon corridor is a rural area like Bonsall/Fallbrook and it has some fine custom estates mixed with more-modest homes. Unfortunately, there weren’t any of the fine estates selling in 2025 and by April/May there had not been any sales above $1,900,000 nearby.
Plus, the new-home tract at the bottom of the hill is owned by the same guy who owns the golf club. They have sold 55 of their 60 new homes with club-membership options included, and over 90% of them closed under $1,500,000.
The only other sale within the golf estates was this 2br disaster. They did no improvements to sell it, no staging, and just dumped on price. Ouch:
I wasn’t getting any help from the surrounding sales!
We waited until mid-March to lower the price. Within a week after Liberation Day, it was obvious that it was impacting the market. We lowered another $100,000:
Finally we found retirees from Ohio who want to join their family here. Their agent was smart to float $1.6 and $1.7 prices by me, because her buyers were like most and wondering how much can they get away with! I told her to not bother.
She submitted a $1,800,000 cash offer, take it or leave it.
To be faced with having to accept an offer that was $450,000 under our initial list price was excruciating mentally, but it was our only offer in 100 days and there wasn’t any reason to think it will get better later. The sellers had some regret about not going on the market last summer like we had discussed, but that’s water under the bridge now.
We took the deal.
Though the house was mostly in original condition, it was immaculate. It had been a lightly-used and well-maintained vacation home for 30 years. How much could be wrong?
The home inspection did confirm – not much wrong here! But the roof had not been replaced, and Mr. Buyer had a previous roof history so he insisted.
They got roof-replacement quotes from $50,000 to $100,000, and in spite of me telling them that we weren’t going to do anything for them, they asked for another $25,000 off the price.
It was a smart move – do we ditch them and go for the two in the bush? No.
We took it, and it closed for $1,775,000, or 21% below the original price.
It was the cumulation of all the bad things that can happen:
It’s a good example of buyers who found a suitable home but wanted/needed the deal to be more attractive to get them to buy it. They had planned to move any time in the next year, so no rush. On our side, the outcome didn’t feel great but our sellers had already purchased a replacement home near their daughter and had no reason to fight what had become obvious after 100 days of trying.
