What’s On Tap For Marin in August and Using Your Real Estate as a Savings Account

It’s August in Marin, one of our nicest months for weather and outdoor activities. Residents and visitors alike will be out enjoying all this great place has to offer: be it hiking, biking, beaching, sailing, walking or any other outdoor thing to do in the county. There are also popular trips to other areas nearby like Tahoe, the Wine Country or the Mendocino Coast. Many people try to sneak in that one (or one more) summer vacation before the kids go back to school, which starts in mid August here and stretches out to early September.

But with all these people out of town and these local outdoor ventures, what’s a home buyer or seller to do, given that a lot of people are just off doing other things besides home buying and selling?

Buyers, try to stay with it this month. Don’t get dragged down by what we call “buyer fatigue”. You may have been looking for that Marin home for months or even years. Don’t give up and don’t worry. Stay at it. New listings will still continue to pop up in August as we are definitely a twelve month market. People always have to move for one reason or another, but granted, not a lot of them as we have one of the (if not THE) lowest attrition rates in the country. But as long as the word “perfect” doesn’t precede the word “home” in your vocabulary, you’ll do just fine. Hopefully other buyers are on vacation this month and a contender comes along with your name on it. Don’t think too much. Go with your gut and grab it, if so.

Hot air ballooning in Napa is a favorite local past time.

Sellers, if you’ve been at it for awhile too and haven’t had the results you want (rare as it is in this market), you too should stay with it. Don’t step back from this momentum and don’t even think about withdrawing your home this month. The last few years showed August to be on par with many of our other months for home sales, so even if you want to go on vacation, leave the lockbox out and leave your agent in charge.

For those of you getting ready to buy or who already own Marin real estate, here’s one for you. I just had an over 60 client call me, saying she wanted to buy a small income property: something under $850,000 that she could rent out for the next 5-10 years. This is a long time Marin resident and investor here, who I’ve known for quite awhile, but this would be only her third income property purchase. I asked her why, and she said the stock market was way too risky right now, money markets and CD’s pay next to nothing, so why not treat another Marin property like a “savings account”. The only real money she’d ever made, while still being able to sleep at night, was owning homes here in Marin. She had spoken with her investment advisers and most of them agreed there were few safer places for her money at this time. She could pay cash and get some income, while also building equity at the rate of roughly 6%-8% a year in that low end price range. Rents and home prices are forecast to just slowly keep going up, so why not? Sounded like good advice to me and we’re going to start looking for a nice little townhome or condo this month. I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes.

As for the current state of affairs, as of August 1st, there are 324 homes for sale in the entire county, down 5% from last month. Add in total condo’s and you get 393 housing choices in our county of 255,000. YTD, the median price is exactly $1.1 mil with the average Days on Market (DOM) exactly 30 days. Those are some strong numbers, folks.

That’s it, enjoy August wherever you are. If you want to friend me on Facebook, drop me a note and we can connect to stay in touch!

All the best,

TS

Text or call 415.377.5222

ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder