I want to start taking a look at the home sales reports on a quarterly basis. Monthly I feel like for most people it’s too much noise. Much like stock prices in my opinion, it’s nice to check in once in a while but too frequently it’s not healthy. I personally like to include condos/town homes in the numbers because looking at single family homes by itself skews the picture in the Bay Area considering their affordability.
It remains a seller’s market in all major counties essentially, which is defined by inventory lower than 3 months. Days on market started trending back down again, which is pretty typical adjusting for the spring and summer seasonality.
The big thing to note is the transaction volume year over year is down. The mainly has to do with inventory again. Most of the counties inventory is below 1 month right now, which is just nuts but makes perfect sense. Sellers face a big capital gain tax if they sell, even accounting for the capital gain exclusion on primary homes. Also normal recurring expenses like property tax would spike greatly for sellers moving into a new house. Some new condo constructions are starting to come online but demand has been so pent up, and the slowly rising interest rate is creating an even stronger rush. Since the recovery, Bay Area has created something like 8 times the number of jobs vs number of new construction units.
Hope you find this useful. Let me know if you have other info you’d like to see or have any questions.
