Gas Prices – Up Everyday in April

Has anyone else noticed the Chevron station at the corner or Ralston Avenue and Alameda has been systematically raising the price of their gas two cents a day for about the last two weeks now? Chevron

Not one large in-your-face price adjustment mind you, no this is a well executed plan to fly below the general public’s radar while filling the corporate coffers with what is sure to be record breaking profits.

But we’re not just picking on Chevron. All the stations around Belmont are raising their prices in lockstep, it’s just that this station is near our office and I often sit at red lights and stare in amazement that they’re getting a two-cent raise each day while my income remains flat—at best.

And I thought the media loves these types of stories…

 

Belmont Home Sales – March 2011

Time to wrap-up Belmont’s single family home sales for March 2011 and this month's graph honors the San Francisco Giants opening season with the famous orange and black.

Belmont March 2011 Stats

(Click on the graph for a full-size version)

Comparing March 2010 to March 2011 we see that the number of sales has increased dramatically, up 70% from ten sales in 2011 to 17 in 2011.

MEDIAN HOME PRICE

The median price fell on paper because much smaller homes sold this year. In 2010 the median home price in Belmont was $994,750 and the median size home which sold was 2,345 square feet.

In March of 2011 the median home price dropped 18% from March 2010 but the size homes which sold were 27% smaller.

What this alludes to is prices actually increased, since now you can get a home 27% larger than last year for only 18% more. Put another way, if we look at the difference in the size of homes selling and use the smaller price per square foot which homes sold for ($417 per square foot) from March of 2010 it implies homes actually cost more this year (505 sq. ft. X $417 per square foot = $210,585). Add that to this year’s March median home price of $815,000 and you get an estimated adjusted median home value of $1,025,585 or a 3% increase over last March.

DAYS ON MARKET

The time it took to sell all 17 homes dropped dramatically as well from 76.5 last March to only 25 days in March 2011.

PRICE REDUCTIONS

Five homes in March of this year had to lower their asking price by on average $43,387 to entice a buyer to bid. In March of 2010 that number was four for $47,000 on average less. As a percentage of homes which sold 40% had to lower their expectations in March of 2010 compared to only 30% this year.

MARCH 2011

Of the 17 sales in March of this year nine homes sold on average for $39,439 less than the seller’s asking price in 64 days.

Two homes sold right at the seller’s asking price in on average nine days, and six homes sold for on average of $19,842 over the seller’s asking price in only 12 days.

MARCH 2010

Comparing that to last March when three of the ten homes sold for on average $39,000 less than the asking price in on average 75 days.

Five homes sold for the seller’s list price in  88 days and two homes sold over the seller’s asking price for $244,000 an average of more in 48 days.

So what’s up with that? The home on Bayview in that sold in March of 2010 completely threw off the numbers. It was a bank owned property that was grossly underpriced and had multiple offers.

Pricing your home as close as possible to its value is still the best strategy to get you the most money for your home, but as you can see in this case, with the abundant access buyers have to information these days, even a home which has been priced well lower than its true value will simply be bid back up to market value—and many times more; while over pricing your home will simply lead to price reduction after price reduction and quickly fall off the radar of many buyers.

 

 

 

 

Belmont Schools Want Your Vote…And Your Money.

Two measures are on the November ballot which would allow for assessments in Belmont to generate funds for school improvements.

During difficult economic times, many people choose not to vote for increases to their parcel tax. We’re not sure if there’s ever been study showing a direct correlation between subsidizing school improvements and higher API achievement scores, or if it’s strickly empirical evidence, but there certainly is ample evidence that homes in areas with great schools have higher property values.

With these two measures on the ballot we’re interested to see how people are considering voting–anonymously of course. Answering this short poll will allow you to see how others might cast their vote as well.

Measures I and N from the San Francisco Examiner:
Five schools in Belmont would get new classrooms, repairs to leaky roofs and other improvements if voters approve two bond measures on the November ballot totaling $70 million.

Measure N would give the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District $35 million to spend on facilities at four Belmont elementary schools – Nesbit, Fox, Central and Cipriani.

Measure I, a companion measure, would generate $25 million for Ralston Middle School. Both need a 55 percent majority vote to pass.

Measure I would cost property owners about $11 per $100,000 of assessed value annually, and Measure N will cost about $27 per $100,000, according to the school district. *With the median price in Belmont at $850,000 right now that would mean an additional $110.50 per year.

Measure N only impacts Belmont schools, so voters in Redwood Shores would not be affected.
Read more at the San Francisco Examiner:

Belmont Home Values – Report for August 2010

There’s little change to report for sales in Belmont for the month of August 2010 but the Case-Shiller report which was released on September 26th showed another increase in the Bay Area metropolitan index for the sixth straight reporting period. This index follows the change in home prices across the country in 20 metropolitan areas. Their complete methodology can be found here.

Belmont August 2010 copy 

(click here for a full sized image)


MEDIAN PRICE:

The median price rose to $885,750 over $837,500 in August of 2009. That represents a 6% increase but is partially negated because the pool of homes which sold were also 14% larger.

SALES:

Home sales remained flat as compared to the previous month but the 20 sales in August 2010 were four more than August 2009.

DOM: (Days on Market)

The days a home took to sell were on average 44—almost half of what it was a year ago.

Of the 20 sales in August only three homes sold for over their asking price for an average of $15,000 more, while four sold right at the asking price and 13 sold for on average $30,000 less.

When Not to sell Your Home

PODCAST SERIES

Podcast_mic

Real estate markets are cyclical and can last ten years as we’ve recently seen, but even within a cycle there are better times during each year in which to sell.

The short answer is the worst time is in the winter, with the best times being in the spring and fall but here’s why. Psychologically, it appears buyers are more motivated to get a home early on in the year. Writing a huge check to Uncle Sam in April could be one incentive, and fulfilling one’s New Year’s resolutions could be another—both are frequently mentioned. Whatever the reason more buyers come out in the spring and tend to pay more for a home (as a percent of asking) than any other time.

The year’s spring market started off rather unremarkable due to the uncertainty of real estate as a holding while many buyers took (and continue to take) a wait and see attitude.

This graph illustrates the favorable fall selling conditions with the seller receiving a high percentage of their asking price. Notice that in October the amount a seller receives typically bounces back up? We call this phenomenon the “fall bounce” as October sales are consummated in September/October.

That could make this fall a prime time to sell in this year’s cycle. Fall is typically another window of opportunity to sell and obtain the most money for your home and this one appears to be shaping up quite nicely. The market has been rebounding steadily since the beginning of the year, and appears it may crescendo this fall, at least for the year.

We wrote a series on our blog at BeautifulMountainBlog.org about when’s the best time to sell where we analyze the important market indicators to determine favorable selling conditions. Some of which are::

·         The month’s supply of homes for sale

·         The amount a seller received of asking

·         The days it takes to sell a home, or DOM

If you are considering moving this fall we’d be glad to answer any questions you may have about the process.

Download when_not_to_sell_a_home.mp3

Belmont ( 94002) Home Prices for May 2010


Belmont “hit one out of the park” last month as 34 homes closed escrow. One has to go back to May of 2002 to see activity like that. Baseball Of course unlike baseball all the “teams” did relatively well as the last minute rush to capitalize on the $8,000 government tax credit lured at lot of new buyers to the closing tables.

But there’s sort of this snowball effect because many of the homes sold in Belmont didn’t even qualify for the $8,000 tax credit. Only 12 of the 34 homes had sale prices below the $800,000 cap. Yet the attention the tax credit received in the media probably buoyed the confidence of fence sitting buyers.

Belmont May 2010 

(Click on the chart of a full sized window)

 MEDIAN PRICE

$848,800—Homeowners are you depressed? It was $967,500 just one month ago! Think back—last year in May the median home in Belmont sold for $840,000 and for that you got an 1845 square foot home. This May you got a 1710 square foot home and in April it was 2418 but lest we not forget it cost you $967,500. The change in square foot may be a better indicator of value—here’s why: The change in square feet between May ‘09 and May 2010 was 135 (7.3%) which is probably closer to where values dropped year over year. Forget about April’s $967,500 benchmark for the year—there were some big homes selling that month and it threw the numbers way off.

DOM

The Days on Market (or the time it took to sell a home) went from 45 last May, to 44 this April and only 26 this May. So homes sold faster. What does that mean? Sellers are getting more realistic about prices and more buyers entered the market. That’s about all those tea leaves are telling you.

% Received of asking

Sellers in Belmont received 99% of their asking price (after price reductions). This is kind of a worthless statistic since homes invariably will sell close to asking once they are lowered to the right asking price. How about if we were to look at last May (98%) and last month (99%) see—statistically no change. Now let’s look at what seller received before they lowered their price—what percent did they get of their original asking price? Turns out at 99.84% it tells us very little accept that not a lot of bargaining goes on in our market. What we do learn is that only 4 people had to lower their asking price to get a sale—the reason for the small differential. But if we look at sellers who accepted less than their asking price we see a different story. Fifteen of the 34 sales received on average $26,000 less for their home while three homes received their asking price, the other 16 sellers received on average $21,000 over their asking price.

Now that the tax credit is over will the flurry of home sale activity be akin to radio silence? Stay tuned for our June update.

Belmont, Ca Home Sale Report for February 2010

We’ve been swamped with business this year and with rolling out our new web page to boot we are just now able to settle down and look at February’s homes sale price figures for Belmont. Believe me, we’re dutifully aware that March’s numbers are available soon and we promise to deliver them in a more timely manner.

February stats belmont 2010 

(Click image for a full size picture) 

MEDIAN PRICE

Once again the median price in Belmont was, in practicality, unchanged. Those of you who follow our posts know we endeavor to portray the most accurate market snapshot as possible. In doing so, we not only report the median price statistic as per our MLS system, but we delve deeper to see if larger or smaller homes sold which can dramatically change the results in a small market sample, such as Belmont, which has relatively few sales each month.

Even though the median price dropped from January’s $850,000 to $800,000 in February (5.9%), the size homes which sold were significantly, (8%) smaller.

Year over the year, the median price home sold in Belmont went from $714,500, last February, to today’s February price of $800,000—an increase of 12% with an increase of the size home sold in the two periods of 14%. Viewed from another perspective, the median size home dropped about 2% year over year in the same periods.

DOM

Homes are still staying on the market for a longer than usual time. This February it to 81 days to sell the average home as compared to 78 days last year. The first quarter of the year includes many homes left over from the winter months and we expect this time (DOM) to drop in the spring selling season, as it typically does.

SALES

Ten homes sold this February as compared to just six last year. Of the ten sold, two sold over asking, two sold at their asking price and six sold for less than asking.

In perspective—

The local market continues to be riding a rollercoaster fueled by uncertain feelings on the part of many buyers and sellers. Some buyers are jumping back into the market with both feet and offering sellers thousands of dollars over the asking price for highly desirable properties, and others are sitting on the sideline thinking there could be another double dip.

March’s numbers are due out in a few days which we predict will show more of the same, with the number of sales increasing and the median price continuing its unremarkable recovery.

Belmont’s Beautiful Mountain Blog Revisited

 

In 2008 we began several new series on our blog site. Most of our content centered around the turbulent real estate market on the Peninsula, but we also endeavored to comment about the market in general and small town happenings in Belmont.

Some of our posts simply required too much time away from the business of selling homes, and we’ve decided to eliminate a few of those.

What we will be discontinuing is the weekly update of new listings and sales. Rather, we encourage you now to subscribe to our automated system for getting listing alerts in real time—including new listings and recent sales; we just felt that we were being a little redundant and this trade-off will allow us more time to concentrate on our business.

You can still count on getting a monthly wrap-up of homes that have sold. We feature Belmont home sales in detail on this blog site and you can always get surrounding cities and the entire San Mateo county stats at our MorganHomes.com web site under “How’s the Market”; we also implemented the Fusion style graphs that are more interactive and interesting.

We’ll continue to add occasional posts in our series “Frequently Unasked Questions” Unasked3 whenever we stumble across an issue we think you should know about, and probably don’t.

 

The Podcasts we began in 2008 will still be around when we want to discuss the market in general and we hope that you continue to stay tuned to those.Podcast

We think this more focused and succinct blog format will help our readers get the real estate information they want, and know that they can rely on our regular posts whicht have attracted the most readership.

Thanks for being patient as we enjoy an exciting 2009.

Belmont Week in Review–December 17th 2008

NEW LISTINGS

The holidays are in full swing and you can tell by the deafening silence that Belmont’s housing activity is slower than the holiday deliveries promised by UPS. A very unscientific barometer is our phones are eerily quiet (which is not a bad thing one time of the year) but some ringing other than the Salvation Army’s bells would still be welcome—let’s not jinx anything.

The inventory of homes for sale is at 40—down considerably from just a few weeks ago. Unfortunately it’s not sales that have been driving the numbers lower but rather sellers have thrown in the towel for the year as ten homes were taken off of the market. We just closed escrow on the last two homes we will sell in 2008 and now it’s so quiet that we decided to take a week off from posting homes for sale to take a break and trade the stress of work for the equally demanding stress of preparing for entertaining the family for Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, we love the holidays but it’s non-stop entertaining 24/7 for three days around here.

Our next post about the housing picture will be our year-end wrap-up in early January where we stick our necks out and make foolhardy predictions which can only backfire in today’s economy. Nevertheless we’ll hold true to our word and re-cap last year’s predications (ugh) and try to realistically let you know where we think things are headed in 2009, as well as give the year-end results from one of the most tumultuous real estate years in history.

Stay tuned though as we'll invariably come up with a few fun posts before the year is out.

Until then, Happy Holidays!Christmas Tree

There have been only three new listings in Belmont in the past two weeks.

Debbie 1 Debbie Lane—3 Bed 2 bath 1,800 Sq. Ft. home on a 5,850 Sq. Ft. lot. LISTED for $ 998,000. This is a good solid home at a fair price and located on a small cul-de-sac on Belmont’s eastern hills exposure (than means warmer). It has a usable level rear yard and hopefully you’ll like the small pool or else you can fill it in. It last sold for $740,000 in 2003 during a lull in the market. No OPEN HOUSES listed. Listed By Deborah Mitchell Hawes, Coldwell Banker.

El Camino 820 El Camino Real—5 Bed 3 bath 1,800 Sq. Ft. home. This place has been a rental and really that’s what it should continue to be used for. It offers great tenant parking which of course is very desirable considering the home is on the El Camino. NO OPEN HOUSE LISTED. Listed By H. Craig Thorson, Red Hawk Real Estate Inc.

Yorkshire 418 Yorkshire—3 Bed 1 Bath 1,010 Sq. Ft. home on a 5,000 Sq. Ft. lot. LISTED for $ 577,900. With all of the sales in this area over $600,000 this home is priced to sell. Here’s a perfect well kept home at a discount. This is our BEST DEAL of the week. NO OPEN HOUSES LISTED. Listed By Michael A. Ames, Patriot Properties.

 

No Homes went into a pending status in the last two weeks.

 

SOLD HOMES

 

Well, sold home actually.

 

Fairway ↔1636 Fairway Drive 3 Bed 1.5 Bath 1,720 Sq. Ft. home on a 6,000 Sq. Ft. USABLE lot. LISTED for

$799,000 and sold in 33 days for $799,000. This home has potential but also needed a lot of work. Located on the site of the old golf course in Belmont and an appropriately named (and desirable) street.