Weekly Market Watch

Coldwell Banker Weekly Market Watch
Week of March 23, 2008

Baseball season has begun and we’re starting to see buyers sliding into home. Yes, from all indications, the Bay Area real estate market is blooming just in time for spring. We were even able to squeeze a few positive headlines out of the media this week after NAR announced an unexpected increase in February sales figures, and CAR announced that sales have been increasing each month in our state for the past four months. Compared to this time last year, the reports still indicate very slow sales. But a dip in the median price, a copious selection of homes on the market in many areas and near-historically low mortgage rates are enticing buyers off of their fences. According to CAR, a number of cities in our area are starting to see increases in median prices again, which may be an indication that those markets are already bouncing back. Some who may have been waiting for the “bottom” in some areas may have missed it.

Open houses continue to bring in high numbers of attendees in the majority of areas, even on a holiday weekend, and multiple offer situations continue to increase on desirable, well-priced homes. A “not very attractive” home in the Berkeley flats was listed at $549,000, had 50 disclosure packets out and sold with 15 offers on the table. A San Ramon open home had more than 50 groups attend. A TIC in San Francisco drew multiple offers and sold for $50,000 over asking. Woodside/Portola Valley had three sales in multiple offer situations last week – one of them listed for more than $11 million. Menlo Park reports 75% of sales in multiple offer situations.

In many communities in San Francisco and the Peninsula, the month’s supply of inventory decreased this week. This week’s mls tour sheet for San Francisco was three pages fewer than the prior week. Realizing that we’re in the seasonal period where we get our highest surge of inventory, and combined with the fact that last week was Easter and it seemed some agents were waiting a week to bring on a new listing, one would expect many additional pages to this week’s tour. This basically says were not getting the fresh inventory to meet current demand, and prices will either remain very firm or rise in our sought-after neighborhoods.

Remember to use the current stats you can now pull up by mls area in MyRECafe, under “tools”. The graphs you can create around pricing and inventory are perfect for emailing to your clients, and to have printed at your Open House. I’d be asking for Open House attendee’s email addresses, and offering to email them a weekly update on area statistics. Local and current sales stats are what our clients need. Catchy and misleading newspaper headlines regarding horrible real estate market…... not so much.

Have a great week!
Rick