Days on the Market—What’s in a Statistic…

How long it takes when selling one’s home to get into contract is one of the most nerve racking periods during the home sale process—for sellers, but how long should it take to sell a home?gambling

Don’t gamble on the outcome. Our study shows that selling a home too fast or having it take too long can be detrimental. Not every case is the same, and not every market has the same perception, but on the Bay Area, specifically the mid-peninsula, statistically, there’s a sweet spot for selling a home quickly, and getting the most money at the same time.

One must understand how potential buyers view this statistic in order to evaluate why there’s a correlation.

When a home is being sold “off-market”, or off the MLS, buyers can have a difficult time ascertaining the intrinsic value. If a seller is asking “X”, potential buyers might think it’s worth the asking price—perhaps more, or less, who knows?

When that same homes goes “Live” to the entire community of house hunters and REALTORS®, if no offers materialize within the first 10 days—or on offer day—it’s a safe bet that the home is overpriced for the value offered, and will more likely than not eventually, sell for less—and savvy buyers know this.

If hordes of buyers line up right away to make offers, buyers looking on will feel confident that the home is priced well—or even too low. Conversely, if the home languishes on the market more than 14 days, and there’s scant interest, it’s a pretty good indication to buyers that the home may be priced too high—or worse that there’s something wrong with the home. In either of the latter cases, buyers will often sit back and wait to see what happens. They typically wonder when, and or if, the seller will lower the asking price.

This is when the tables shift and buyers are empowered to make offers at or below the seller’s asking price.

As a seller the last thing you want to do is overprice your home. Trying to alter a general opinion that there may be something wrong with your home puts a seller in a quandary, if not a perilous position.

Sellers can’t advertise that there’s “nothing wrong with their home”, since certainly every home has some inherent flaw. What they’d like to advertise is, “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be buying my home—it’s just as good as all of the others”. Except that, it’s probably overpriced.

What other factors can cause the days a home is on the market to creep up? In addition to the number one factor of overpricing a home, there’s accessibility and presentation.

Making your home hard to show can be hugely detrimental to getting the most buyers in to see your home. Making it “appointment only” or having it shown through your “agent only” will invariably limit the number of potential visits to your home.

When Real Estate agents set up a day to show their buyers homes, they know everyone’s time is limited. It does no good for them to show buyers so many homes that their buyers become overwhelmed, so agents will limit the showings to as many as they can comfortably fit in. If your home is hard to get into, they might save it for another day—or they might skip it altogether. Often a buyer will find a suitable home on their first outing.

Buyers are busy people. Often they are juggling jobs with long hours, pets and/or small children as they traipse around trying to find a suitable home. Having an open house where they can leisurely stop by on a weekend afternoon will benefit the accessibility of your home and increase the showings. Think how many mid-week dinner time appointments can be deferred by inviting buyers to a weekend open house.

Is one weekend enough? Many times it can be, but then you could be missing out on that one high bidder who was out of town on a business trip, or heavenly forbid, a weekend getaway from the stress of house hunting.  Imagine how frustrating it is for buyers who finally take a break for a one-week vacation only to learn that there dream home sold before they could return. And if you’re a seller, imagine potentially leaving that much money on the table.

Lastly, but certainly not least, is a home’s presentation. Not all sellers nor their agents present homes the same way. Some sellers despite their agents’ vehement admonitions will still cook a fried fish diner right before a critical showing. Real estate agents can also sabotage a seller’s likelihood of a sale by not realizing the importance of market saturation advertising—tapping onto the full potential of the internet with international and social marketing which includes the latest 3D virtual tours, video and of course Facebook and Twitter portals.

Our Next Post…Photographing Your Home—It’s Not Child’s Play. The photography of your homes is best left to professional. Too often we see homes presented with pictures taken from a cell phone.

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Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 20 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.

For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.

 

 

 

 

Know What Changed our Housing Market

In order to know what changed our housing market, one must understand that markets are constantly in flux, it’s just hard to see when you are in the middle of one.

We took a look at homes in Foster City for a client recently. The premise was they wanted to know if the housing market was in the seller’s favor, or in the buyer’s favor–if prices were going up, steady, or dropping.

Anecdotally many agents will tell you their opinion based upon their personal observations. If they had a hard time selling their last home they might tell you the market is “changing” and if their last listing flew off of the shelf, they might believe the housing market is as robust as ever. But whatever people feel, the numbers don’t lie. Numbers are an unemotional representation of what is occurring in a given market.

Let’s first discuss the market conditions. There’s a lot of hyperbole as to the state of our current housing market. Sellers are still in the mindset that they hold all of the cards, yet buyers are beginning to push back on prices. Sellers are receiving fewer offers, many homes are having to lower their asking price, and homes are selling often times below the asking price—something that rarely happened in 2012- 2015. This lends itself to a shifting market.

Shift

Clearly the sky is not falling, the shift is towards a more normal market, where homes sit on the market longer, and may or may not sell at the seller’s asking price. This long awaited market shift is not a correction, but rather a predictable and healthy move towards a more balanced and sustainable market. To be blunt, prices have risen to a level that the majority of buyers can no longer afford.

We first examined all of the sales in Foster City which occurred in 2015 through August 31st in order to compare 2015 home sales within the same seasonal periods to 2016. We added no search filter other than the date range, since the larger the pool of sales more reliable the data.

This is the data:

FC Market Conditions

It’s clear that a market shift has occurred. While the median home price had a marginal increase of 3% YOY, in every category there’s a distinct shift towards a more normal market. There are more homes selling, for less over the asking price, and taking longer to do so. There are more cancelled listings, more price reductions, and for a greater amount. The inventory of homes for sale is growing—up from .83 months of inventory to three months this year.

The month’s supply of inventory is the measure of how many months it would take for the current inventory of homes on the market to sell, given the current pace of home sales. For example, if there are 50 homes on the market and 10 homes selling each month, there is a 5 month supply of homes for sale.

The months of supply is a good indicator of whether a particular real estate market is favoring buyers or sellers. Typically, a market that favors sellers has less than 3 months of supply, while more than 6 months of supply indicates an excess of homes for sale that favors buyers. Foster City is currently running a housing inventory level of 3 months.

What this means is that the market shift will no doubt continue until there’s a full blown correction. We could be years away from that happening, but we are moving into the slowest part of the season where seller’s typically net the least for their homes. And if interest rates rise—and they should since they’re at historic lows, that too will have a damping effect on home values in the foreseeable future.

How long will the new normal market continue? We’ll save that wild card prediction for other talking heads. Nobody really knows of course, and anybody that professes they know should scare you. But the market appears to have hit a price threshold. As fewer and fewer buyers can qualify for the median price home, fewer sellers will be getting windfall profits like they did during the meteoric rise over the last three years.

Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 20 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441.

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.

 

 

 

Belmont Home Sales Suffer From A Stall

Belmont home sales this June suffered from the stall we predicted in this post back in May.

Comparing Belmont July of 2015 sales statistics to July of this year, they might look rather benign, but when you look a little deeper, you can see indications of what could be a slowing trend.

There were only two more listing this year than last, and even with seven more home sales in 2016 the inventory of unsold homes doubled. So did the months of inventory–rising from a minuscule .3 of a month to a mere .7—(still a ridiculously low number considering the U.S. housing inventory level hovers around six months). [CLICK THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

YOY June 2015-2016

While the $129,000 median drop in home prices might seem shocking at first glance, it’s mitigated to some degree since smaller homes sold this year. In fact, if we factor in the difference in the size of the homes in the two periods we come up with an almost identical median price year-over-year of $1,633,000.

We also see the price per square foot dropping from $906 to $824—and larger homes sold last year. Why is that important? Because larger homes statistically sell for less per square foot, since the land upon which they sit is not in the equation, yet can account for 50% or more of a home’s value.

And there’s the smoking gun—home prices did not go up in Belmont this June as compared to last. Not only that, but sellers received only 106% of their asking price compared to 119% in June of 2015. [CLICK THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

BELMONT jUNE 2016

Is it the unknown of Brexit? That served only to help lower mortgage payments—in theory giving buyers more buying power. It is an election year? This one is tumultuous. Whenever there’s an unknown in the air buyers tend to pull back, sit on the fence and wait it out—it’s human nature.

It could also simply be that we’ve hit a price threshold that the average buyer can no longer afford, or any combination of the above (or more). In any case, it was bound to happen at some point. The question is, have we hit that point?

Disclaimer:

Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 20 years experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441. 

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.

Drew & Christine Morgan did not necessarily participate in these sales

 

 

 

 

 

Homeowner’s Face Mandatory Upgrades

Homeowner’s face mandatory upgrades as the state legislature has determined that it’s time for us all to remodel our bathrooms. Well, not just bathrooms, actually any part of your home that contains older plumbing fixtures. Now there’s no excuse to put off that bathroom upgrade you so desperately needed. Of course, everybody knows that changing a plumbing fixture will open Pandora’s box, and of we’ll all then need fancy new bathroom vanities and glass tiled backsplashes to accentuate our new low flow faucet.Water Conservation

In the end this is good for our water conservation efforts, as well as stimulating our economy with hundreds and thousands of remodel projects about to get on the books. How long before you have to take on a multitude of remodel projects? Less than six months it turns out.

Though this new ordinance does not rise to the level of a point of sale requirement, it is a disclosure requirement at the point of sale. It also encourages cities and counties to adopt more stringent rules than the statewide mandated “disclosure only”, so don’t be surprised if a town near you rises this to the level of a new point of sale ordinance, assuring every home for sale would then be outfitted with the latest trendy look.

Below is the text we excerpted from the Civil Code, for your convenience.

 (a) On and after January 1, 2014, for all building alterations or improvements to single-family residential real property, as a condition for issuance of a certificate of final completion and occupancy or final permit approval by the local building department, the permit applicant shall replace all noncompliant plumbing fixtures with water-conserving plumbing fixtures.

****(b) On or before January 1, 2017, noncompliant plumbing fixtures in any single-family residential real property shall be replaced by the property owner with water-conserving plumbing fixtures.

****(c) On and after January 1, 2017, a seller or transferor of single-family residential real property shall disclose in writing to the prospective purchaser or transferee the requirements of subdivision (b) and whether the real property includes any noncompliant plumbing fixtures.

(Added by Stats. 2009, Ch. 587, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2010.)

 

Disclaimer:

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.

Making Heads or Tails of The Housing Market

Making Heads or Tails of The Housing MarketCoin Toss

Whenever the real estate market has been heading in an upward or downward direction for an extended period of time, people naturally begin to question when the current trajectory will end—and we are not immune to that natural tendency.

We live in Belmont and our real estate office is in Belmont but we also look to national and macro indicators as well, since the Bay Area really is its own microcosm of tech and real estate activity and what happens in the Bay Area tends to stay in the Bay Area.

Trying to make heads or tails of our local market is much harder since the number of sales (data points) are so few they are easily distorted by one or two outlier sales—a bidder who “had to have the home” and paid way too much, or a seller that sold off market for far too little.

The Macro Level

We post Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller analysis each month to our web site. Even though the data has a three month lag time, its relative information and year-over-year data points are telling.

This is a graph of the MSA for our area—referred to as the San Francisco MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) but it’s composed of counties, Alameda, Contract Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo. Note that we’ve recently experienced a blip on the radar of declining index values for two months in a row.  Is it a trend? It could be. We’ll know more over the next two month’s reporting periods. Since the beginning of the recovery in February of 2012, there have only been two other instances when the index declined, only to bounce right back up—but only one  cycle of decline during this period ever lasted more than three consecutive months . What is disconcerting is that four of the five index declines have occurred in the last two years.SFMSA 2015-2016

With that in mind, we turn to Belmont home sales for March 2016.

Stats March 2016

The chart depicts Belmont real estate activity for the month of March in 2015 as compared to March 2016.

SALES

Sales of existing single family homes waere down 70 percent YOY, which might seem frightening except that inventory levels—the homes available to sell were down 60%.

MEDIAN HOME PRICE

We believe this actually dropped, here’s why. Technically, the median home price was up 6.3% YOY but that bought a Belmont home which was over 30% larger than in 2015. The 539 square feet difference at the going rate of $643 per square foot equals a disparity of almost $350,000. If you were to subtract that from the 2016 median home price, we get an adjusted media home price of $1,175,000—or an 18% drop in the median home price YOY.

PERCENT RECEIVED

This also dropped from 120% of asking in 2015 to 104.5% in 2016—a 13% drop. Now 120% in March of last year was an anomaly, but still on either side of March in 2015 it was 107% and 117%.

Belmont home values have reached a point where fewer and fewer people qualify for the median home price. That puts a damper on the rate of appreciation, so we expect that this year we will see more volatility in the numbers, and continue to put these numbers into perspective as best we can.

Disclaimer:

Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 20 years experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.

You can find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and also find them on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.

Free Solar Panels May not be Such a Bright Idea

Solar power leases may have pitfalls. We’re seeing more and more solar panel popping up on home these days and with them come issue when trying to resell one’s home. Studies have suggested that the addition of solar panels on a home can boost a home’s value. But sometimes those solar panels can sabotage a deal when it comes time to sell.Solar Power Savings

Selling Green Homes

Making the Case for Energy-Efficient Homes

Energy-Efficient Mortgages Gain Popularity

More Builders Find the Sun Is a Selling Point

Do Green Homes Fetch Higher Sales Prices?

More companies are offering home owners a contract to lease solar panels where they pay no upfront costs for the installation and could start saving on their electricity bills right away. But some home owners who sign onto these deals are finding some snags when they go to sell.

Many potential buyers are leery of taking on the leasing payment contracts for the next 15 to 17 years because they often have to qualify on credit from the solar companies themselves, in addition to the mortgage. Also, some buyers are hesitant to sign a contract because they’re concerned the solar equipment will become obsolete or won’t amount to a big savings in the end after paying the leasing fee.

We asked Solar city over to our home in Belmont for an estimate. Of course the carrot is free installation, but the savings is minimal. Since they are leasing you the equipment, they take an override on the energy their panels on your roof produce–and they sell that energy to you at a reduced rate–but it’s not anywhere close to free, as if you owned the equipment.

But we’re seeing issues trying to re-sell home with leased solar panels. Some home buyers are refusing to buy the house unless the seller buys out of the remaining lease payment stream — which could be $15,000 or more. If you’re going to eventually buy-out the contract anyway, it’s a far better idea to but it up front and enjoy 100% of the energy dollar savings.

In Fresno, Calif., a couple trying to sell their house told The Los Angeles Times that it attracted multiple offers but two sets of buyers backed out of the contracts due to the leased solar panels on their roof. The buyers felt the long-term cost of the lease agreement was too high or they were concerned about the credit qualifications they had to meet in order to take over the lease. Ultimately, the couple selling the home had to pay $22,000 to break the lease with the solar company so that they could sell the house.

With the rising popularity of solar, we already have seen several disputes arise over solar panel leases, and we expect the problem will get nothing but more frequent.

Residential solar installations are rising dramatically — up by 50 percent per year since 2012, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Before you sign on the dotted line for a solar lease, check with your accountant for tax consequences if you purchase the system, you might qualify for a tax incentive write-off. A simple home equity line of credit may be all you need to qualify to own 100% of the power your home generates.

Source: “Leased Solar Panels Can Complicate – or Kill – a Home Sale,” The Los Angeles Times (March 22, 2015)

How Low Can Housing Inventory go?

The year is just getting started but already there’s a problem with the housing inventory levels. Belmont’s housing inventory consisted of five homes for the month of January 2016. To put that into perspective, Belmont’s housing inventory has averaged 41 homes a month since 1998. In 2015 the average for the year was 12 homes a month. Since housing inventory fluctuates seasonally, we looked at the housing inventory levels for each January—that averaged 30—remember, we are at five right now.

This inadequate housing supply puts intense upward pressure on home prices. As we have seen in the past year alone, the amount sellers received of asking increased from 105% in January 2015 to 107% in 2016.

MONTHS OF INVENTORY

Month’s supply of inventory is the measure of how many months it would take for the current inventory of homes on the market to sell, given the current pace of home sales. For example, if there are 50 homes on the market and 10 homes selling each month, there is a 5 month supply of homes for sale.

The months of supply is a good indicator of whether a particular real estate market is favoring buyers or sellers. Typically, a market that favors sellers has less than 6 months of supply, while more than 6 months of supply indicates an excess of homes for sale that favors buyers. Belmont currently is running a housing inventory level of .56—yes, less than one month. On a national level, we’re still hovering around 5.6 months of inventory. Home Sales January 2016

MEDIAN HOME PRICE

The median home price in Belmont increased 24% YOY, from $1,210,000 in 2015 to $1,500,000 in January 2016.

The median size home which sold increased YOY too, from 1,500 sqft in 2015 to 1,610 sqft in 2016. If it’s any consolation to buyers, while homes went up 24% in January 2016, buyers did get a home that was 7.3% larger.

PRICE REDUCTIONS

Price reductions remain at an all-time low. Only one seller in 2015 had to lower their initial asking price and in 2016 no one suffered the price reduction fate. Imagine the chatter around the water cooler when it’s time to fess up to your colleagues yours is the only home that had to have its asking price lowered.

OVER/UNDER GAME

Of the homes that sold in 2016, seven sold for over the asking price, one home sold right at asking and one home sold for less—strange as that may sound given the tight market conditions—it’s still possible to overprice one’s home.

Days on Market [DOM]

The time it took to sell a home in Belmont dropped nominally from 12.7 days in 2015 to 11 days in 2016.

New Rules For Tax on Home Sales

Taxes

There are new rules for taxes on home sales you will want to understand. We know taxes are not the most sexy subject, but they’re important for one to understand when it comes to the disposition of real property assets.

First, what is FIRPTA? The IRS defines it as the, “Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act of 1980 regarding the disposition of a U.S. real property. Interest by a foreign person (the transferor) is subject to the  (FIRPTA) income tax withholding.”

What the Change to FIRPTA Withholding Means for You

Under current federal law, if a foreign person sells US real property, the buyer is obligated to withhold 10% of the gross sales price and remit this to the IRS. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015, however, which became law on December 18, 2015 (the “PATH Act”), the required 10% withholding will increase to 15% for all closings occurring on or after February 16, 2016.There is an exception to the increase for sales of a personal residence wherein the sales price is between $300,001 and $1,000,000. Under this circumstance, the 10% withholding rate continues to apply. In summary:

  • If the sales price is $300,000 or less AND the buyer will use as a personal residence – No change, exempt from withholding.
  • For all other real estate sales the buyer must withhold 15% of the sales price of the real estate (10% if a personal residence with a sale price between $300,001 and $1,000,000) and send it to the IRS within 20 days after the date of transfer.

Do you as a buyer really have to hang onto the 15% of the seller’s proceeds? The answer is if you don’t, you could be liable for the seller’s tax obligation. But not to worry, if you use an escrow company to handle your transaction they’ll take care of it for you, and protect you by having the seller sign a form for the IRS.

Information courtesy IPX Property Exchange Services, Inc. and Lawyer’s Title Company.

 

Disclaimer:

Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 20 years experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.

You can find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and also find them on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.

Are December Home Values Real?

Are December Home Values Real? Can we trust what we hear?

Being REALTORS, we’re used to being asked “How’s the market?”, but never more than during holiday social events.

Real estate is the topic of conversation at a lot of social gatherings—we overhear conversations when we are out and about quite frequently. Usually it’s one person telling another about a crazy home sale in their neighborhood, where the final sale price was hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking, or the number of bidders hitting double digits.

That makes for great story telling, and in fact it’s an accurate one at that. Out of the 20 Belmont home sales in December 2015, 10 sold over $100,000 above the initial asking price. So if that’s become the norm, wouldn’t the better story be the home in the neighborhood that closed over a hundred thousand dollars under the asking price? And in fact that was the case in December, when a home on Adelaide sold for $123,000 under the list price of $1,688,000. We’ll save how that could happen for our next post…

December Belmont Home Sales
December Belmont Home Sales

SALES

Belmont has 20 homes sell in December, besting December of 2014 sales by over 60%.

MEDIAN PRICE

The median home price was $1,431,000 in December, a drop over November’s median home price of $1,652,000, but an increase over December of 2014 when the median home price stood at $1,198,000. Since the median home price seems to be the factor most people focus on, we’ll try and put that ~20% year-over-year increase into perspective.

One of the problems with using the median price is that it reflects if there has been a large amount of more expensive or less expensive homes sold in any given period. In these circumstances, you can often notice large differences in the median home price of a certain city from month to month.

For this reason, it is often better to view median prices over longer periods of time and monitor the trends, rather than looking at one month’s figures in isolation.

Last year the median size home in Belmont that sold in December was only 1,430 sqft, while this December it was 1922—34% larger. A 20% increase in price offset by homes being 34% larger could mean that home values in December actually dropped year-over-year. But this is small market sample, relatively speaking, and therefore subjected to these types of wild swings in data points.

To further answer the question of whether values are still on the rise, we turn to a larger market sample—San Mateo County, where instead of the average 15 sales we have in Belmont in a given month, the county as a whole has 350.

Here we find that the median home price trend went up 22% year-over-year. Since this includes many areas which are just now enjoying the rapid appreciation Belmont has seen in the past several years, areas like South San Francisco and Daly City, this number too is a bit skewed and is not necessarily representative of our mid-peninsula cities median home price growth.

When we take the median home price in Belmont for all 12 months in 2014, we arrive at a median monthly home price of $1,283,750 and using the same calculation for 2015 we arrive at a median monthly home price of $1,506,250—or a 17% increase year-over-year.  Obviously home values are still on the rise, but the exact rate is difficult to ascertain with small market samples.

Days on Market [DOM]

Homes are still selling in about 13 days on average. This is not to say that all homes are selling in 13 days, it means that of the homes which sold, they took 13 days to sell. Some homes languish on the market even in today’s red hot seller’s market and do not sell and are thus excluded from this calculation.

MONTHS of INVENTORY

The months of supply is the time it would take for all the current inventory to sell if it all sold at the current rate without new inventory coming on the market. In Belmont, it stands at .1—yes, that’s 1/10th of 1 percent a month of inventory. To put that into perspective, nationwide the housing inventory level stands at 5.7 months.

PERCENT RECEIVED

Belmont homeowners enjoyed receiving 109.4% of their initial asking price, as compared to 107.2% in December 2014.

It is interesting to note that 35% of the homes sold closed for less than the seller’s asking price. We contribute that primarily to the slower seasonal period.

Belmont Housing Forecast—-Are We in For Another Bubble?

2015 Real Estate in Review and 2016 Forecast–Are we in for another housing bubble?

Our Peninsula housing market certainly has a life of its own.

While the nation’s housing sector has been slow to climb out of thHousing-bubblee doldrums, the SF Bay Area housing sector has been catapulted into the stratosphere fueled by historically low interest rates and demand for housing from the gainfully employed high-tech sector.

U.S. housing growth, as measured by the renowned Case-Shiller Home Price Index supplied by Standard & Poor’s, showed composite housing prices on the national level rose 4.8% year-over-year since September 2014, while the San Francisco MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) rose over 11% during the same period. Looking back to when the Bay Area housing market began its recovery in April of 2009, home values have risen 84%, while on a national level they have risen only 20%. (Data as of SEP 2015—S&P Indices lag the market by two months).

—Where do we go from here?

For the last three years, demand has outstripped supply resulting in multiple offers and over bidding, driving home values to record levels. But our housing sector is so heavily influenced by the tech sector’s success that any bump in the road could spell a reversal in fortunes for thousands of homeowners.

It’s seems against the very essence of REALTORS® to acknowledge our industry is susceptible to downturns—this despite recently experiencing the largest housing decline since the Great Depression. Changes in a couple of key market forces could dramatically slow or even reverse the current trend of rapid housing appreciation in the Bay Area.

Jobs—According to the Economic Institute, for each job created in the high-tech sector, approximately 4.3 local jobs are created in other goods and services sectors. That’s great when job creation in the high-tech sector is on the rise, but when the tables turn it could send the housing sector into an economic death spiral.

Interest Rates—The Federal Reserve has been droning on about an increase in the Federal Funds Rate for over a year now. If mortgage rates rise as well, a half percent (0.5%) increase would cause monthly housing payments to be 6% higher. That increase would not only affect the amount one is qualified to borrow for a mortgage, but would also limit monthly cash flow. When money becomes more expensive to borrow, the amount a potential home buyer can bid will decrease, effectively ebbing the tide of over exuberant bidding.

We’re not saying that we believe we’re there yet, and we could be years away, but one thing is certain—home values in our area are at an all-time high, and they won’t stay there forever.

 

Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 20 years experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.

You can find them on Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and also find them on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes

 

The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.