Weekly Market Watch

Coldwell Banker Weekly Market Watch
Week ending February 10, 2008

It has been a big week for real estate news. The National Association of Realtors, DataQuick Information Services, Standard & Poor Case/Schiller, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and even Zillow.com, among several others, bombarded us with indexes, surveys, lists and reports. Filtered through the media, the headlines were, of course, mostly negative – but there were nuggets of positivism in many of the articles. You just had to mine deep within the articles to find them. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for the N.A.R. expressed it best by saying, “Those pessimistic thoughts are being driven by media outlets that tend to cherry pick data and experts to perpetuate the story that the economy is heading into recession.” He also stressed that, despite the value of national housing data, all real estate is local and consumers should base their decisions on local trends.

The biggest positive news nugget was that President Bush signed the economic stimulus package into law. One component of the package includes a temporary (through December of this year) increase in the conforming loan limit set by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA. The change increases the limit from $417,000 up to as much as $729,950 based on the median price of a given metropolitan area and local market. This is a great bonus to buyers in the greater Bay Area where our median price maxes out the new limit easily in many areas.
The anticipation of this truly necessary change in the conforming loan limits is, I believe, what has spurred so many buyers to be out looking at our more than 460 open houses with such gusto. Every single office reported successful opens this week. People were “out in droves” in Castro Valley. 85 groups visited a new Berkeley Hills listing. One Petaluma home had 26 buyers through it, while another on the east side of town saw 70 groups. In Menlo Park, open houses were “almost booming”, and they were “terrific” in Woodside/Portola Valley.
The savviest buyers are already enjoying the selection and pricing in the market and are buying homes in a wide variety of price points, and making their buying decisions quickly when they find that right property. A Castro Valley home was listed at $1.15 million and received offers within days of going on the market. Pleasanton, Dublin and Livermore all saw an increase in pending sales. Three different new listings out of the Walnut Creek office sold in less than one week. Burlingame is still seeing high end properties moving quickly and with multiple offers, and many sales continue to occur in the area privately, before a property is even brought onto the market. Half Moon Bay capped off a busy weekend by seeing two homes sell within hours of being listed.

All of this activity and the positive news out of Washington D.C. indicate that our optimism is not unfounded.

Have a great week.
Rick

Rick Turley
President, San Francisco/Peninsula
Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage