May in Marin: Home Sales Push Ahead With No Signs of Slowing

It’s May in Marin County and spring has sprung. The “Miracle March” rains brought popping flowers and green hillsides like you can’t believe and the entire county is literally shining with all the budding foliage. What’s missing from front yards, however, are those much-needed For Sale signs. Whether it’s uncertainty (or certainty) about the economy going forward, a belief in strong future appreciation, or both, for some reason, most home owners are staying put, leaving most home buyers no choice but to dig deeper into what I call “The Three C’s”: Cash, Creativity and Compromise. If they want to win instead of taking a half-baked stab at it, they absolutely will need to pony up more money than they want and buy a less-than-perfect home in a not-so-perfect location. You gotta start somewhere though and with prices going up and fewer homes than every for sale, what more can you do?

First some background. When I started in real estate back in the Jurassic Era of the mid 80’s, there were roughly 1400 homes and condo’s for sale for buyers to choose from at an given time. This isn’t a ton for our county of 255,000, which is only a slight population increase over the last 30 years. But if you think THAT isn’t a lot of homes to choose from, today, buyers have only approx 400 at any given time. And that’s now, during the busiest listing time. Three months ago, the number was 250. You don’t have to have a degree in economics to figure that the cost of your supply is likely going to increase, given this scenario of growing demand.

For this month, watch for well-priced, well-located listings to see multiple offers, up to half of them all cash, especially in the lower price ranges. A lot of empty-nesters are trading down to smaller one story homes that are walkable to shops and services, many of them rich with cash after selling their own big homes and with no intention of getting a mortgage.

Speaking of which, mortgage rates are set to rise again, likely above 5% on average. Will that dampen the buying party? Who knows. It’s been years since we’ve seen anything like that, even though it’s effectively 3% money after your interest write off (up to a $750k mortgage). A lot cheaper than the 13% they were when I first started. But we’ll see.

That’s it for now. Enjoy May, wherever you are. Any real-time questions though, let me know what I can do to help. Thanks for reading and here’s to a great 2018 for all of us.

TS

Text or call 415.377.5222 or ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder