Compared to last year, there are 25% more sellers not willing to get realistic about the value of their home. It’s fine, as long as they don’t mind waiting for all the other better buys to clear out – and it might be a loonnnggggg wait.
The median days on market for the 484 unsold listings is 45 days now (average is 58 days on the market). The existing inventory is so picked over, that virtually none of the listings that have been on the market for more than two weeks (which is 77% of the total number of actives) have a chance of selling unless they radically change their price.
It is such a great time for hot new listings to hit the open market though. Of the 156 pendings, 39% of them found their buyer in the first two weeks on the market! There are deals to be done!
Here’s why home buyers should be optimistic – as demand falls off, it will probably be a wide-open playing field for the rest of 2024! No seller is going to be dumping on price though, especially the sellers of the better homes that you want to buy. You gotta be able to dig them out.
We were on a call yesterday with our referral network of Compass agents around the country, and Gregg in the DMV (D.C., Maryland, and Virginia) said they have been required to use the buyer-broker agreements for the last twenty years.
Great – a test case. How has it gone?
He said that 98% of all DMV sales include seller concessions for the buyer-agent fee, and it’s been like that since the beginning! Wow! If we can do that here, then the whole commission-lawsuit debacle will fade away, and just be about more paperwork. The buyer-broker agreement I sent out yesterday was 14 pages!
The clip below is good news for buyers too. The new form was changed to give buyers a chance to cancel an exclusive buyer-broker agreement. Everyone has a chance to choose when signing whether the agreement is exclusive or non-exclusive. The non-exclusive can be cancelled at any time, but on the previous version the exclusive could not be cancelled. Now this is included:
Starting today, Compass agents can include the amount of the buyer-agent compensation that their sellers are willing to pay. The amount is added manually to each listing, so it might take a while before every agent gets fully immersed. If you’re curious, check out Compass listings at compass.com:
The mainstream media outlets (WSJ and CNN) are highlighting the changes in realtor compensation one more time this week. They’re not offering anything new because they can’t find anyone who can predict what will happen, good or bad.
A summary of my thoughts on the topics:
Will commissions come down? Who cares about the overall result. A better question is whether youcan get a lower rate, and the answer is yes, absolutely. If you don’t care about the quality of service provided, there will be more desperate realtors than ever. But it is due to the market conditions, not the commission lawsuit. The inventory of quality homes at decent prices is virtually zero, and sales have been plummeting:
Prices and rates have been sticky, so the dropoff in sales is likely to continue. The better agents will navigate the realtor changes more effectively, and pick up market share as the inferior agents struggle to sell anything. The national stat I saw recently was that 3/4 of the agents haven’t had a sale this year.
So you can hire an agent who offers a lower rate, but you only get one try at this.
Will home prices come down? No, not locally because only the creampuffs will be selling. Sales aren’t likely to improve because rates aren’t going to get much below 6% in 2024, no matter what the Fed does so the affordability will stay pathetic.
Do you need an agent? Yes, if you can find a great agent. You don’t need a lousy agent.
You have to consider the market conditions – they aren’t great. There is a lot of standing inventory because buyers only want a great match for a decent price – and they are rare. If you are a seller or buyer of a cool house priced attractively, consider the difficulties. I’m in one now – I made an offer to purchase a new listing over the weekend, and it’s Wednesday and I still don’t have a response. It is very frustrating on both sides – I’m sure the sellers think they should wait-and-see what else happens and hope I don’t go away. Tough for both sides to navigate this, and having a lousy agent makes your chances of a good outcome even worse.
Will sellers pay ‘concessions’ to cover the buyer-agent fee? You’re going to see mumbo-jumbo like this:
Seller agrees to consider fulfilling the Buyer’s obligation to pay Buyer’s Broker if requested by Buyer in the Residential Purchase Agreement at an amount agreeable to Seller subject to Seller approval of the terms and conditions of the Purchase Agreement.
But it doesn’t mean anything. Buyers should be prepared to pay your buyer-agent in full, and hope the seller might do a little something for you. But only on listings that are struggling. Do you want one of those? Lowballing the old listings is a real strategy.
Should sellers offer to pay concessions? Absolutely, because it’s only an offer, not a guarantee. Decide what to do once you get an offer to purchase, and it will be the lube that makes the buyer a little happier about paying more for your house because they don’t have to pay their agent too.
Will open houses be a nightmare? Yes, because non-agents HAVE to sign in, and the paperwork shuffle will take precedent over showing and selling houses. Be on the lookout for unrepresented buyers trying to make a deal with the agent on duty. If you see people whispering, that’s what is going on….and it means buyers should resign to paying for their buyer-agent in full to compete.
What will happen in 6-12 months? The buyer-agent will be extinct, except in higher-end areas where professional services are appreciated by those who value their time more than money. The main reason the buyer-agent will go away is because nobody within the real estate industry is standing up for buyer-agents. The brokerage admin people are already viewing the new rules as logistically more challenging (i.e., more paperwork) and a hot bed for more lawsuits, which is likely. It will be easier just to offer buyer-agents nothing and wish them luck.
This is the dawning of single agency – stay tuned!
It’s not really oceanfront with a 4-lane road in front, but it’s close. You have the traffic-controlled crosswalk at the corner for easy access to the staircase down to the sand (that the City of Carlsbad is spending $14 million to repair and replace). It’s close enough!
3820-B Carlsbad Blvd., Carlsbad
2 br/2 ba, 861sf
YB: 1970
LP = $1,199,000. Now pending!
I took over this listing from another agent who is an old friend. He had taken the listing at $1,299,000, and he had an ideal oceanview photo displayed prominently. I first thought – is this one of the units in front with big ocean/sunset view? What is a deal!
But it turns out that it is the apartment in back, down under the staircases:
Oh great…but it’s nothing that price won’t fix! If we just go a little lower we will be the cheapest beach property for sale…..and if one of those desert buyers comes to town determined to get out of the heat, then we’re golden. It’s the perfect time of year to be on the market!
Get Good Help!
And yes, the minute the file got turned in, the new process began. Do you have all the forms? Do you have the right forms? Did you get the right forms from the other side? Did the buyer-agent have a buyer-broker agreement to show the home?
The August 17th NAR Settlement Jubilee is underway, and it’s all about paperwork compliance for the administrators. It was the same during Covid. We just needed paperwork signed that said people didn’t think they had Covid. Nobody ever verified an actual covid test – it was just a paperwork shuffle.
Those of us on the front lines will keep doing the selling, and we’ll get the proper signatures, don’t worry.
Did you know there are more households with pets than children? These beloved pets are a driver of a major facet of economic activity: home buying. About one-fifth of recent home buyers considered their pet in their neighborhood choice—a share that increases among unmarried couples and single women buyers. Let’s dive in!
According to the U.S. Census, the share of families with children under the age of 18 living in their homes has continued to decline. That share, in 2023, stands at 39%, down from 52% in 1950. This is likely due to two factors: birthrates overall have been declining, and there is a large share of Baby Boomer households whose children may have already left the nest.
This trend is mirrored among home buyers. In 1985, 58% of home buyers had children under the age of 18 in their home. In 2023, just 30% of home buyers had a child under the age of 18 in their home—an all-time record low.
While the number of children in U.S. households has declined in the last twenty years, pet ownership has risen. According to the American Pet Products Association, 66% of American households own a pet, up from 56% in 1988.
If you have sold a house since 2015 and some of the commission you paid went to the buyer’s agent, you can file a claim here. Of the $730 million, the attorneys are taking around $300 million, and the estimated payout to claimants is expected to be roughly $13 each:
We need to start talking about the Padres winning the World Series this year. We don’t want to win the division and have to sit out the first week of the playoffs. We want to be playing the first week and have Jackson Merrill and Manny leading the team! The kid is phenominal!
Beginning on Saturday, every realtor will need to have a written contract with their buyers to show them a house for sale. We have had months to prepare, so we’ll see how receptive the buyers are to our presentations, and how willing they are to paying for their realtor too…on top of sticky prices and rates.
There is only one thing that matters now.
Will listing agents respect the role of the buyer-agent, and encourage their sellers to pay them?
Because most buyer purchase contracts will include a request for the seller to pay ‘concessions’ to help cover the buyer-agent fee, it will be a negotiable item, just like price.
There will be overwhelming desire for the seller to chip away at the buyer-agent fee too.
Will listing agents stand up for their fellow agent? Or will they join in the dogpile and encourage their seller to negotiate a higher price and lower concessions to beat up on the buyer-agent too. Listing agents are going to be tempted to suggest a beatdown on the concessions so they look like a hero to their seller. After all, they can justify it as part of their fiduciary duty!!
But watch yourself. The life you save may be your own.
I’m going to make an unusual plea of my fellow agents.
If you make an offer to purchase one of my listings, I promise to uphold your fee as best I can. If your offer is so low that it’s killing the seller and he brings up reducing the concessions as the only possible solution to making a deal, then I might get stuck. But in all civil negotiations, I will back you up, and you will receive the fee requested.
I encourage all agents to do the same.
I have no hope that other agents will join me, however.
The coming slugfest is going to be brutal, and it will expedite the extinction of buyer-agents, probably within the next 6-12 months. I think we should protect buyer-agents because buyers deserve adequate representation, and it’s asking too much of them to have to pay the full buyer-agent fee too.
Mortgage rates took a dive…..for a couple of days. Now they are back in the low to-mid sixes – where they have been for the last month or two. Was there a big surge of new pendings this week? No. The total count of NSDCC pendings went up +2 since Monday.
There have been 52 closed sales in August, and their median sales price has been $2,275,000 – about where it’s been for most of the year. It gives the impression that pricing has been steady/stagnant between La Jolla and Carlsbad this year.
Let’s dig a little deeper though.
Look how dramatic the NSDCC average list pricing has dropped this year:
And these are the statistics on active listings (unsolds)! How much more will it take?
Even though pricing has improved, each price range has more listings today than when pricing was higher, indicating that there is more work to do.
For the sellers looking forward to 2025, get in early, before it gets crowded. I already have three sellers waiting for the spring market – I’ve never had people tell me so early that they are waiting until next year.
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We sold a home with Jim and Donna and from beginning to end they were consummate professionals. Their initial walk through the property resulted in a list of items to be repaired or updated. They supplied a list of vendors and job quotes to do the repairs and updates. We originally wanted to sell ‘as is’ and just get it over with. They gave us a selling price for ‘as is’ and options for doing a few updates/repairs to doing it all with the selling price for each option. We agreed to do all they suggested and we sold for the exact price they predicted. For every dollar spent we got back more than $2 back in the selling price. And they got that price in a rising interest rate environment! Donna and Jim are extremely detailed and guide you through ever aspect of the sale. There were no surprises thanks to their guidance. We couldn’t be more pleased with their representation.
Thank you Donna and Jim,
Jerry and Mary
Heather Quejada
March 27, 2025
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We have known Jim & Donna Klinge for over a dozen years, having met them in Carlsbad where our children went to the same school. As long time North County residents, it was a no- brainer for us to have the Klinges be our eyes and ears for San Diego real estate in general and North County in particular. As my military career caused our family to move all over the country and overseas to Asia, Europe and the Pacific, we trusted Jim and Donna to help keep our house in Carlsbad rented with reliable and respectful tenants for over 10 years.
Naturally, when the time came to sell our beloved Carlsbad home to pursue a rural lifestyle in retirement out of California, we could think of no better team to represent us than Jim and Donna. They immediately went to work to update our house built in 2004 to current-day standards and trends — in 2 short months they transformed it into a literal modern-day masterpiece. We trusted their judgement implicitly and followed 100% of their recommended changes. When our house finally came on the market, there was a blizzard of serious interest, we had multiple offers by the third day and it sold in just 5 days after a frenzied bidding war for 20% above our asking price! The investment we made in upgrades recommended by Jim and Donna yielded a 4-fold return, in the process setting a new high water mark for a house sold in our community.
In our view, there are no better real estate professionals in all of San Diego than Jim and Donna Klinge. Buying or selling, you must run and beg Jim and Donna Klinge to represent you! Our family will never forget Jim, Donna, and their whole team at Compass — we are forever grateful to them.
Lou F
March 27, 2025
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WeI had the pleasure of working with Klinge Realty Group to sell our home in Carmel Valley, and I cannot recommend them highly enough!
Jim and Donna demonstrated exceptional professionalism, offering expert guidance on market conditions and pricing strategy, which resulted in a quick and successful sale.
Communication was prompt and we were well-informed throughout the entire process.
For anyone looking for a dedicated and knowledgeable real estate team, look no further!
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William Sams
March 25, 2025
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Donna and Jim Klinge of Klinge Realty Group have our highest possible recommendation. From Donna and Jim’s first visit to our house through closing their advice and counsel was candid and honest in all dealings. They kept us fully informed throughout the process. The house sold less than three days after listing with a two-week closing. My wife and I have sold several houses during our lives. This was by far the best experience. Klinge Reality is a premium service realtor. You can’t make a better choice for someone to sell your home fast and for top dollar.
Emily Hernandez
December 29, 2024
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Donna and Jim provided exceptional support and professionalism throughout the entire process. We couldn't have been happier with their efforts. They made our house shine, and thanks to their expertise, it sold above the listing price in the very first weekend! Truly a fantastic experience from start to finish.
Jesus Adrian Sahagun
November 11, 2024
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This year has been difficult on our family, mainly due to having to sell our home. Thankfully we knew God had a plan for us and working with the Klinge team was a key part of it. It was an obvious decision to work with them again after such an amazing experience when purchasing the same home we needed to sell. The challenge was, how will we do this in so little time with so much going on? Jim and Donna held our hand every step of the way. Whenever an unexpected issue arose they found and provided a solution. Never once did we feel pressured to make a decision and the Klinges were always reassuring after providing the information that the decision was ours to make. Despite the curve balls, they never panicked and exemplified the “can do” attitude, making us feel optimistic and taken care of. Their expertise and professionalism was superb. But of all the reasons to work with the Klinges, the most impactful and valuable is their compassion and genuine care for their clients. We pray that we can one day purchase our forever home and you better believe that Jim and Donna will be representing us - as long as they will have us of course. Thank you again Klinge team! Your execution, experience, and care are unmatched.
SABIHA PASHA
July 23, 2024
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Jim and Donna were fantastic! Jim understanding my needs, recommending potential places, pointing out the pros and cons of each property was invaluable. Then when the offer was accepted Donna’s organized guidance through the inspections, paperwork etc made the whole process seem effortless.
So grateful that I had them on my side!
Anu Koberg
July 13, 2024
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We first found Jim through his blog at bubbleinfo.com, which really showcased his knowledge of SoCal real estate. Since then we've done three transactions with Jim and Donna, and they are an incredible full service agency, with Jim's deep market insight and Donna's deft contract and project management. We trust them implicitly in their analysis and strategy, which is based on years of experience. They're always available and on top of things, and we strongly recommend them to anyone.
Bjorn Isachsen
July 10, 2024
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The Good
The Klinge Realty Group operates like a finely tuned machine, with a very personal touch. We contacted them on a Sunday and they were talking to us about our family and our needs on our living room couch the following day. They carefully listened to us and worked with us to identify the best and quickest path to listing within 2 weeks to take advantage of the low inventory conditions in our South Carlsbad neighborhood. They knew our tract specifically and had many previous sales there over the years - they came prepared with a thorough analysis of comparative sales and recommended a pricing strategy that they felt confident would yield offers the first weekend on the market.
The Great
Over the next two weeks Donna coordinated a range of vendors who she knew from experience could get the preparation to list work we needed done on time and with high quality. Our light tune-up involved excellent experiences with their stagers, landscapers, contractors, electricians, and plumbers. Throughout this period Donna's daily communication was clear, concise, and responsive. Any time we had questions Donna picked up the phone or texted immediately - but almost always, she answered our questions before we even knew we had them.
The Outstanding
We had a tricky situation with a shared fence that could have delayed our escrow. Donna used superb mediation skills to negotiate the terms of replacement and was personally on site with the fence contractor to make sure everything went smoothly. The fence looks great and escrow closed on time.
The Truly Exceptional
Our house came on the market on a Wednesday and between then and Monday morning Jim was personally at all three open houses. He was in constant communication explaining potential buyer reaction and strength. As he predicted offers began to come in on Saturday and each one was incrementally higher than the last. At the end we had 5 offers, 4 of which were over list, and the final accepted offer was $100,000 over list. In addition to being over list it included rent back terms that met our needs.
The Recommendation
For all of these reasons we would strongly recommend The Klinge Team to anyone wanting to sell in North County Coastal San Diego. I had been reading Jim's bubbleinfo.com blog for 15 years and knew when the time came to sell that he would be our first call. Jim Klinge is not your standard realtor. He is keenly aware of market conditions and sales strategies. And, works his tail off - though not as hard as Donna . At this point he's gone from realtor to friend and I plan to have him over to grill and chill at our new place to talk real estate, but also just about life and raising kids in San Diego. He's more interested in relationships than his sales numbers - and that's why his sales numbers are so high. We have already recommended the Klinge's to some close friends and another successful sale is on deck right around the corner...
Chris Shea
June 21, 2024
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We recently had the pleasure of working with Jim and Donna from Klinge Realty Group to sell our house, and we couldn't be more satisfied with the experience. From the initial meeting, they listened attentively to our needs and provided invaluable guidance on specific improvements to get our home market ready.
Their responsiveness throughout the entire process was truly impressive. Anytime we had questions or concerns, they were quick to address them, ensuring we felt comfortable and informed every step of the way. What stood out the most was their team and extensive network of tradespeople, which made addressing any necessary repairs or updates seamless and stress-free.
Thanks to their expertise and dedication, our house sold quickly and at a great price. We highly recommend Jim and Donna to anyone looking to buy or sell a home. They are a fantastic team who truly care about their clients and deliver exceptional results.
