By Eric Castongia, Zephyr Real Estate
Half the real estate community thinks the market is still roaring, the other half think something is brewing. Given the number of listings we saw come on across the city after Labor Day, some sellers feel something coming too. You will soon see that West Portal/Inner Parkside has not been impacted by this as of yet.
We started seeing isolated instances of no offers on properties citywide at the end of the second quarter and that has lingered throughout the third quarter as well.
On the most premium of properties, the number of potential buyers bidding on a property generally remained high, while those properties with a negative ding or two may have received multiple, but fewer offers; overall prices stayed up. The problem for the isolated cases where no offers were received, seemed mainly to be a case where there was an issue that was difficult to resolve, was priced too aggressively, or buyers had choices of multiple properties. As for us:
- At the close of the second quarter of 2015, we had no active listings, seven pending, nine sold and two that failed to sell. Of the nine sold, seven received multiple offers and all nine sold over their asking price. In cases where an offer was over asking, but there was one offer, may indicate a ‘pre-emptive’ offer, which means an early offer before an anticipated offer date.
- The amount of overbids ranged, from as little as $110,000 to as much as $505,000.
- Comparing the same quarter of multiple years indicated that we are below the expected target for the average number of sales. I went back as far as 2005 and in the third quarter, we have typically had 13 or 14 sales. Our high in 2014 was 17 and right after the financial melt down in 2007 and 2008, we had 10 and 11 sales respectively in the third quarter. Interesting that we have fewer sales than in the depths of the financial melt down. That, I suspect, is largely why we have not seen pauses in the market yet.
- Of the nine sales, five were reported as all cash (no loan on the property).
- Looking at average appreciation from the second to the thirds quarters, I estimate an increase between four and eight percent; looking at year to year appreciation, it is closer to 20 percent.
- Once again, West Portal and Inner Parkside are in their own bubble within a bubble.
- A word of caution before listing your property, look at comparable sales and trends to establish a price in line with the marketplace and take citywide competition into consideration. Once we start seeing price reductions and withdrawn properties being more common place, that is the start of a market change.
Eric Castongia, Broker Associate at Zephyr Real Estate (BRE Lic. No. 01188380) provided the information in this article. The content of this article is an interpretation of data from the San Francisco Multiple Listing Service and Eric’s observations in the marketplace; he is available to discuss your situation or any questions you may have. He can be reached by e-mail at Eric@SFHotBuy.com, or via mobile phone at (415)307-1700.