Marin Real Estate Blog

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

It’s July in Marin, one of our nicest months for weather and outdoor activities. Granted, our temperate climate allows for great hiking, biking and general playtime around the county nearly all twelve months of the year. But May thru October are the most predictable for warmth and clear skies. Don’t get me started on the last few winters, where we saw 70 degrees in January and very little rain. That’s for a whole different blog. For now, those of you who live here, enjoy one of the best places to live in the whole United States. Not the most affordable, mind you, but certainly some of the highest quality living you can find, but with an ever-increasing desire for new residents to live here also. Hence, the driving force of our slowly appreciating home prices, which brings a challenge for not only transplants, but also for existing residents.

Riding at Stafford Lake, Novato

As anyone who has followed our home sale market knows, inventory is always tight here. In any given area, there are a fixed supply of homes and condo’s for sale. In some small towns, like Larkspur or Kentfield, it’s likely you’ll see a total of 6-10 places for sale in the entire town, in all price ranges. Smaller areas, like Greenbrae? Sometimes only 4-5 homes for sale. Total. So choices remain slim and smart buyers tend to get used to these two words pretty quickly: compromise and flexibility. Well, that’s three words, but you get it.

Most agents tell their buyers to look for a 6 out of 10 home. If they find that, consider making an offer. If it’s got 7 or 8 out of 10, make a strong offer, 9 out of 10, just buy the place at almost all costs. Rest assured, there is no 10 out of 10. At least not in my 29 years, regardless of the sales price. I sold a house to one of the early Google engineers, who bought a new house for $5.1 mil. They spent $150,000 opening a kitchen wall and changing quite a few things around to make it their own. After that work and the installation of an organic garden, it was then a 10 out of 10 for them. So buyers, be flexible. I’m sorry about the limited choices here. In most other areas of the entire country, you would have a lot more to choose from, but that’s the way it’s always been here.

As of July 1st, there are 341 homes for sale in the entire county. Add in total condo’s and you get 411 housing choices in our county of 255,000. This is down from 440 this time last month. And this is the busy listing season, so if you see something out there that’s even just “attractive”, maybe consider it. The sooner you buy the cheaper it will be, yes, but also the less of a tax base you’ll have going forward. Even if prices trickle up 6%-8% a year on average, Prop 13 calls for a maximum of a 2% increase each year. It’s not a lot, but it tends to add up once you get over $1 mil in sales price.

Sellers? Any honest agent will tell you that selling your home shouldn’t be difficult. The challenge is, where you gonna move to? If it’s Houston or Phoenix, you will have dozens of homes to choose from in every price point. Here, not so much. So do your research and have a plan in place before you even think of selling.

That’s it, enjoy July 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

Summer is here in the North Bay: the kids get out of school by mid June and we should start to see warmer weather after an unusually cool May. Not that the housing market is showing any signs of cooling, mind you. It’s as warm as ever, with our slow price appreciation likely continuing well into the summer. Unless a whole bunch of people suddenly decide Marin isn’t the place for them, inventory will remain limited, as has been the case for the last six or seven years. It’s not so much a temporary pattern anymore, as likely just the way it’s going to be.

Muir Beach in June

Beginning in 2007, the housing market turned both here and throughout the country. Unlike over-built and over-developed areas where land is plentiful, Marin was still basically a no-growth county back then, much as it is now. Prices softened in the national mortgage meltdown, but didn’t plummet. That was understandable. What WASN’T understandable was this: instead of our inventory rising, like in other places, our housing for sale actually started to drop. We went from roughly 1200 active homes and condo’s for sale back then, downwards, year over year, until where we are now. That would be 402 choices in the entire county as of today. Sure folks sold off their vacation homes and boats, but most of them kept their residence in Marin, continuing our distinction of being one of the lowest attrition rates in the country. Fewer people move out of here than most any other county in America.

So like other quality places to live, demand continues to outstrip supply by a long way and we don’t see that changing. The state population is set to double here over the next 20 years or so and it’s highly likely a good percentage of those transplants are going to want what we have: 75% open space, great schools and basically no crime, no smog and no heavy traffic.

One thing that may help the housing crunch in parts north is the new SMART train coming early next year. We’ve seen buyers move up to cheaper areas in Santa Rosa, looking forward to taking the train into Larkspur (ultimately) and jumping on the ferry into SF. It’s going to be fast, cheap and a green way to go, much like the ferry itself. But it should also allow buyers to get more for their money by moving to Petaluma or beyond, without worrying about a two hour drive in to work. More on that in the months to come.

Until then, enjoy June and all of 2015, wherever you are. Any questions or help I can provide, I’m here for you.
As always, feel free to text, email or just call me up. I’m usually around.

Ted

415.377.5222 c
ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

It’s mid season for our home buying market and we’re in the thick of it here, no question. Qualified buyers are out in force, well aware of further appreciation to come and not wanting to be left behind. The media frequently updates us on the rising population of California, a statistic that is sure to bring further interest by many to enjoy the high quality of life that Marin County is known for. Given our zero-growth mantra, you don’t need a calculator to figure out that the price of the supply is going to only slowly increase with the equally growing demand.

The turnout from my first Broker’s Open on this new listing last week. Note how many color flyers are left, on the right. And we always start with 100.

That increase is far from an exact science, however, at least to the untrained eye. When valuing a property, a number of factors are taken into consideration. But at the end of the day, and at the start of the marketing period by going on MLS, many experienced agents choose the safe tactic of “under pricing” to determine “market value pricing”. This helps us not only get the highest and best outcome for any seller, it also helps us gauge the strength of the market going forward: either for our next listing or for the buyers we may be working with now or in the near future. Here’s how.

Every serious seller wants to know the level of activity on their home before they go on the market. This can be difficult to determine and is far from the price-per-square-foot formula used in sprawling cities like Phoenix or Las Vegas. With so few housing developments here in Marin, home values in any given neighborhood are eclectic, to say the least. Many identical sized homes on the same street can vary greatly in value and be over a million dollars apart, due to a number of factors.

Our county is 75% hillside, so level land is at a premium right off the bat. With our temperate climate, many of our residents choose to walk instead of drive to shops, parks and schools, making the close-to-town locations the most popular place to be for some, but certainly not all. Four bedrooms remain to be highly desirable over three and on top of that, the aging population prefers a one story home with few stairs, if any. They too, then, are the most sought-after. But very few homes have all of these value factors in place, or if they do, it’s a hob knob combination that varies widely, mostly due to my three L’s: Lot, Location and Layout, discussed frequently in this blog. So with all of this, what’s a seller to do when it comes to figuring out their home value?

The reality is, we can all only get close, at best, when figuring out value. Sure we look at nearby sales, but those are likely to be skewed up or down by a plethora (or absence) of those factors discussed above. With the sellers’ permission, many agents choose the safe route: often under pricing a property rather than the risky route of over pricing. There’s a saying here that the buyers set the value, not the sellers or the agent. All we can do is get close and let the market respond from there. The level of that response lets those smart sellers know exactly the level of buyer activity is on their home, with the resulting offer(s) being the ultimate determination of that value. It also let’s agents in tune with that market segment know exactly what the buying interest is for the next listing. If that agent doesn’t know that the last sale received five offers after it goes into escrow, they will once it posts as Sold. The MLS now has a field that indicates whether or not Multiple Offers were received and if so, how many. This is good to know. In this case, there would be four buyers still out looking with cash in hand, ready to buy. Likely they would be joined by another buyer or two and the resulting sale would then be a good guide as to the value of the very next similar listing to come along. Sound confusing? Try doing it every day throughout any of our twelve towns. Thankfully, there’s wine on weekends.

Speaking of which, if you haven’t tried it, the 2012 River Road Zinfandel is worth a taste. Less than $20 and it received 91 points as a Best Buy in Wine and Spirits magazine!

Any questions or help I can provide, I’m here for you.
Enjoy May and all of 2015, wherever you are. As always, feel free to text, email or just call me up. I’m always around.

Ted

415.377.5222 c
ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

 

Another Gorgeous Spring Day in Marin County

So I don’t know who was chanting “Rain rain go away, come again some other day” back in November, but it sure worked. Looks like it will be a fourth year in a row for the drought Gods, assuming we don’t get pounded in April, that is. It’s northern California and anything can happen in March / April, so I for one am keeping my umbrella and aloha shirts both handy. Luckily the reservoirs in Marin are stocked full of water to get us through the next three seasons. With voluntary rationing in place, we should coast through for another year, at least. Though you should know the definition of “voluntary”.

My brother lives in Mill Valley with his wife and I was talking to them recently about their driveway (try to keep up, it was a pretty heady conversation) and whether or not he should replace it. It had a few normal surface cracks, but don’t we all. Nothing major or what a Home Inspector would call a dangerous “trip hazard”, which is commonly more than a half inch pop up in any slab surface. What the driveway could use, on the other hand, was a decent power washing. It’s inexpensive and can make a tired driveway look new again inside a few hours. “Uhhh, that’s not going to happen”, he said.

Turns out, in his town, or maybe just his part of town, the water waste citizens brigade is out in force on a near-daily basis. He said he tried power washing a couple years ago and people actually pulled over their cars to politely ask him to stop. He did right away, after only 15-20 minutes, but one person even went up to his front door after he had packed it all in, just to make sure he understood about the rationing. So much for “voluntary” thing. At least it explains why his car is always so dirty.

Speaking of which–well, I wasn’t really speaking of this, but lacked a better segue–the housing market continues its slow motor sideways on the inventory side, which means prices are continuing their equal motor up on the appreciation side. Due to the lack of new listings in March, we saw the multiple-offer poker game repeatedly, especially on any home or condo on one story, with level land, close to town and “done”, or ideally, all of the above. Many of today’s buyers can’t or just don’t want to deal with the fix up program and there are far fewer Y’s out there in the DIY scenario. Most are of the YDIFM (You Do It For Me) mind set and ideally you do that before they make their offer to purchase. It’s a trend we’ve seen for the last five years and only continuing as more people choose to spend their weekends at home, not at Home Depot. So if you’ve got a home to sell, my advice is to invest what time and money you need to get it dialed-in and ready to go, or “done” as we call it.

Any questions or help I can provide, I’m here for you.
Enjoy April and all of 2015, wherever you are. As always, feel free to text, email or just call me up the old fashion way. I’m always around.

Ted

415.377.5222 c
ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

March is here, but the listings are not. Not yet, anyway. If you follow this blog, you’ll know that March and April tend to be our two biggest months for new inventory added to MLS. The past four years have seen a steady drop in those new listings, however, and it’s too soon to tell if this late winter / early spring season will be an exception. I help run the online and off-market network group for the top 100 in Marin and I have to tell you, there are a few new properties coming that I’ve heard of, but certainly not a ton. But again, not so far and that could easily change.

I was talking with a client today and she asked me why there “just aren’t a lot of houses for sale” here. The honest answer is, I don’t really know. But one thought is, if you owned a successful business that was making you money with little or no effort, why would you sell that business? If you get transferred or want to trade up and buy a bigger business, I get it. But with home prices set to slowly gravitate up here in the near future (or beyond) you better have a pretty good reason to sell. And when you do sell, you better have a place to buy immediately as prices are slowly creeping up all over, at least in California.

Or maybe you want to move because your spouse talked you into this “hot new color” of kitchen cabinets I just saw. Yes, those are black.

The new kitchen cabinet color for 2015. So black is the new white?

That said, like you the public, we also sometimes have to wait and see what happens with the market, often with little or no warning as to what’s going to happen next. Home buyers and sellers are like two separate schools of fish: each has their own agenda and each moves in unison, often turning or accelerating without any visual communication between them. Remember those National Geographic films we saw in school? They all just turn left, right, left, straight–all without so much as a nod, let alone a little fish bubble word to each other. I can just imagine the lead fish sending out the vibe though, “Annnnnd left turnnnnnn…NOW! Now right! Now left again! Hey, is that a shark? Kidding! Back to the right!” All of a sudden, one Tuesday or Wednesday (the big listing days) you’ll see 3-4 dozen new listings. The following week, maybe only 1 dozen.

And it’s not always weather-dependent, either, as you would think it would be with the buyers, who have the same herd mentality. It’s like they all get together online Sunday at noon and one person sends out a broadcast email: “Everybody go tour Open Houses today! On your mark, get set….” and we get slammed at the Opens. Or the opposite happens, with no Super Bowl or Rainstorm on any given Sunday. You could have 5 people or 55, hard to gauge, let alone predict, so I always prepare for a big crowd.

Anyway, busy agents like me tend to get some heads up on a smattering of what may be coming on the market, but not always. Let’s see what March brings, but so far, a little more rain would help. The reservoirs are all full with our drinking water, but the ground could sure use it. Tahoe too.

So enjoy March and all of 2015, wherever you are. As always, I’m here to help with any questions you may have. Feel free to text, email or just call me up the old fashion way. I’m always around.

Ted

415.377.5222 c
ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

February is here in Marin, though apparently nobody told that to the rain Goddesses. It’s been, literally, forty days and forty nights since any precipitation fell in the county. This after the deluge throughout December filled the local reservoirs to capacity. A recent article in the IJ tells the story, but after seven straight inordinate winter seasons, it appears climate change is here.

Me working the phone during a Squaw Valley storm, 2006. Note the old flip phone which dates the pic.

I was telling some younger residents about the amount of rain that used to fall here, how we’d go up to Tahoe and there’d be ten foot snowdrifts alongside the road. Last few years, there’s rarely an inch on the ground at lake level and the only resorts staying alive are those that invested heavily in snow making, like Heavenly with its 100 snow guns are on the mountain.

But rain isn’t the only thing we’re missing and certainly not the only thing that’s changed in the county those same last seven years: housing inventory, or specifically the lack thereof also. Beginning in 2008, the number of properties for sale in Marin dropped, contrary to the rest of the country where inventory soared with short sales, foreclosures and other distressed sellers, not to mention regular (or organic) sale in general. Not so in Marin. Contrary to what some of us alleged “experts” were expecting, we saw most residents here buckle down and hang onto their homes, even if they were (or went) underwater in value. Sure the vacation condo, boat or third car went up for sale, but rarely did we see an investor or homeowner give up and throw a For Sale sign up. I know I advised everyone who asked me NOT to sell, as I knew the market would recover at some point. The desire to live here is just too high and it’s not like they discovered an old nuclear waste dump under the Civic Center or anything. The fundamentals of a good quality of life were still in place then, as they are today. Fortunately, most people hung in there and the rebound over the last four years has helped them with their pain from those earlier times.

Will anything change this year? Not likely. If you read this blog or any Bay Area newspaper (there are four) they all point to this year being a repeat of last, which was a repeat of the previous year if synergy means anything on your end. I’m in agreement with this, given what I see on my screen, which isn’t much.

Often, your local agent (hopefully a busy one) will be a harbinger of things to happen in your area. We hear or better yet “see” a lot of online chatter with a variety of inquiries or announcement regarding the housing market. This includes, new listings, new price reductions, homes being sold off market and even the occasional rental. Let me just say that since January of 2011, all of these email alerts have been in short supply, much like the housing inventory itself, rentals included. In a simple supply / demand economy, this is an easy one to see why values of the homes have gone up, both in resale and rental prices. And it’s going to continue this year also, at least given what I’m seeing from my perspective. The media doesn’t always get it right, but they get it this time.

What to do from here? Well if you’re a buyer, I’d say it’s okay to buy, even though you’re likely going to pay more than you think the property is worth and, possibly, even more than you can comfortably afford. Nobody wants you eating Top Ramen for dinner every night after your home purchase. But just know that 99% of the buyers out there have experienced the same thing and they will all tell you this: it generally gets easier over time, often after just six months. Given the long term approach to owning a home, this is a very short time frame for a little financial discomfort. And besides, Top Ramen is usually two for a buck and actually isn’t that bad if you get the low sodium version. My ten year old son loves them.

Sellers? Well, don’t get greedy and you should be rewarded. It’s an open-market economy where the buyers will tell you (and your agent) what your home is worth. Stay off of Zillow (or Zilcho, as we call it), don’t listen to your neighbor or your sister in New Jersey. Listen to your agent and price your home effectively. Don’t start high and expect someone to “just bring you an offer”. They won’t. We don’t know why, but here more than anywhere else I know of, buyers are reluctant to write an offer that isn’t roughly within 98% of your asking price. Avoid the overpricing trap that leads to a lot of Days on Market, or the dreaded excessive DOM. Buyers will want to know what’s wrong with your house if it’s sitting there longer than (again, roughly) 45 days, but I hear that question on homes on the market for just 21 days. Things move fast in this online world and you don’t want to play catch up or chase the market by dropping your asking price. This may be a tough concept to grasp, but not for your agent, I promise. Less is more, trust me.

So enjoy February and all of 2015, wherever you are. As always, I’m here to help with any questions you may have. Feel free to text, email or just call me up the old fashion way. I’m always around.

Ted

415.377.5222 c
ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

It’s 2015 and all signs point to this being a good year: for the country and our county. Marin home prices should continue their rebound and move up 5% – 12%, depending on a number of factors, which I’ll get to in a minute. But this year is likely to be a duplicate of 2014. Given what we’re all reading, the U.S. is also “back and ready to drive global growth” according to a recent AP article, which you can read in full here. Expansion will be in the 3% range, just over what we saw last year and the first time we’ll see this since 2005. Guarded optimism due to slow growth are the watchwords here for Marin real estate and much of America, though we’re not entirely out of the woods yet on either front.

A recent Marin Independent Journal recapped that median home prices were up in December 14%, but that’s just over last December, not for the entire year. That was also for the median price, which is $950,000 now and far less than the average price of approx $1,200,000. But as in most areas, the lower priced “affordable” homes sell quicker and increase faster than those in the mid or upper ranges. The complete article is here.

Sleeping grape vines in January

Six years after our county and our country sank to the depths of the Great Recession, both are back and on firm ground. I haven’t heard about any areas of the U.S. where the housing market hasn’t been in some form of protracted recovery, but we all know that other nations across the globe aren’t doing so well, particularly in Japan and China. Both countries are experiencing the hangover of too much growth too fast. This is the opposite of what we have in America and, ironically, also here in Marin.

As a county, we basically have a fixed supply of land, remaining at roughly 255,000 people over the last 20 years. The only housing expansion we’re likely to see will be in the form of affordable housing for qualified buyers: teachers, nurses, firefighters, etc. But with the state population looking to grow slowly and steadily, the demand to live here will only increase, particularly in the lower price ranges. Much like in the last two years, it often will be cheaper to own than to rent. Mortgage interest rates are down and rents are up, yielding easy math that will continue to push home prices slowly higher, though price appreciation in Marin isn’t an equal or simple curve. Predictable for busy agents, yes, but not exactly static for the average home buyer.

The factors are these:

• the three L’s
• price range, and,
• our long buying season

The L’s you’ve read here before:  lot, location and layout. The more level land you have, the closer you are to any of our twelve towns and the more one story living of the home, the more valuable it is today and tomorrow. Simply put, more people want to live in these types of properties than others. Not all mind you, as plenty of folks enjoy a mountain top view far from everything with no lawn to mow, but just generally speaking. Keep in mind that the aging Boomers are (and have been) preferring to live on one level for some time and this will only increase as that demographic seeks to avoid steps for those aching knees or hips. So if you want a safe bet, take less house with fewer stories over a bigger house on multiple levels, strictly from an investment viewpoint anyway.

Price range is simple and is the same in many areas. The more affordable your home is, the more people can afford it and the more it becomes a rental alternative. The average home price here is approximately $1.2 mil. (Another Marin IJ article notes that the median is just under $1 mil, see that here.) That house rents for an average of $5,000 a month, $0 of which is tax deductible. For the same monthly mortgage payment of $5,000 a month, you save more than enough to pay your taxes and insurance after your write off, making it cheaper to own. You just have to come up with the 25% down to make this scenario work.

The Marin buying season is new to most relocating here or buying for the first time, but it’s not that far off from other parts of the world. It just happens in a different time frame, where most home purchases take place over five months of the year, February thru June. Yes we have a twelve month market, but few transactions take place November thru January with seasonal slow downs also in July and August, which are typically vacation months for many residents. But most of our appreciation takes place in just half the year with the bulk of the sales volume happening then too. Family buyers scramble to seek, purchase and move in to a new place in June or July to get ready for the kids to go back to school in late August. This we’ve seen for the last twenty years as Marin has become more of a bedroom community for people who want our quality of life, paying more than 99% of the counties in the U.S. for clean air, low crime rates, excellent schools and very little traffic considering our proximity to three major employment hubs. They also like the 75% dedicated open space Marin has to offer and are likely to keep paying the price to live here. Absent something completely unforeseen, this should be a great year for all of us.

Snow levels are creeping back up at Tahoe

So enjoy January and all of 2015, wherever you are. As always, I’m here to help with any questions you may have. Feel free to text, email or just call me up. I’m always around.

Ted

415.377.5222 c

ted@gomarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

Winter is officially here in Marin as a series of recent storms brought much-needed rain to our parched county. We’ve got a long way to go to get us out of the last three semi-dry years, but we’re off to a good start. Water has been pouring into the reservoirs and snow has been falling in Tahoe, much as the photo below depicts. No gully washers yet, but as with the choice of homes for sale out there, it isn’t much. As many a buyer says, though, “We’ll take it.” It’s doubtful Santa will bring any new inventory this month, assuming history is any guide. Normally, Marin residents focus on the holiday season rather than treating this as a month to trade up, down or sideways. Every year we see a couple dozen sellers pull their homes off MLS for a short (or long) breather. Why have buyers tramping their wet feet through your decorated home when you can wait for the sunny skies of spring, they say. So our already-low inventory of homes for sale drops 5-10% the first week of December, with this month being no exception.Buyers too tend to retreat, focusing on holiday parties, family gatherings, snow sports or just their own brief respite from home searching. Everybody needs a break now and then, no matter what the cause or task, and it’s certainly understandable with home buying. Given the predominance of multiple offers out there, many of these buyers have tried and come up short with their attempts at a home purchase here. To them, I can say, “Good for you for trying, but whatever you do, don’t give up”.By every account on everybody’s screen, there is no sign of the Marin market repeating another unscheduled downturn as in the freak year of 2007. There’s only every sign of another continued slow uptick of appreciation. Look for another average of 9% in 2015, but like this year, more than that in the lower range and less in prices above $3 mil. Basically, a turtle’s repeat of 2014.For the stat-minded of you, the supply of Active homes, condo’s ranches and arks dropped to 372 on Dec 1st. Some towns have only a handful of properties for sale, like Fairfax, where there are just four houses on the market in all price ranges. As has been true to form, the number of homes In Escrow (under contract) hovers around 40%, making it another seller’s market, pretty much as will remain the case next year also. Buyers who bought this year? Congratulations and well done. You probably figured you were overpaying, but as time has passed, you’ve seen that worry abate. Buyers who didn’t buy? Keep at it, after the holidays, of course. The smart one’s will compromise and be flexible, able to celebrate their purchase in time and read this blog twelve months from now to feel what today’s new homeowner is experiencing. Rents should also continue up, so if you’re a landlord, good news. If you’re a tenant, rates are so low, it’s almost free money after your deductions, so best not to wait too long or for that ever-elusive perfect property. If it makes you feel any better, in my 28 years of doing this, I have never, ever had a buyer buy the perfect home. They got close, but there’s no such thing as a 10 out of 10 here, no matter what you hear or read online. Except for this well-written blog, that is. Believe all of it! Haha. Okay, enjoy December wherever you are. Text or email me if you have any questions. Until next year, be safe and be warm. Ted 415.377.5222 cell ted@allmarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder

Unexpected rain fell on the county at the beginning of this month, but it wasn’t enough to dampen the spirits of Giants fans who turned out in droves for the downtown pennant celebration. The paper said the numbers topped 200,000, which is a lot of people for anything, let alone crowded into and around city streets. Makes you thankful we can all come home to the peace and quiet of Marin; not that the home sale market has been peaceful or quiet lately.

Home buyers also continued to show up in droves last month. Despite our usual low inventory, properties traded at the rate of just over 8 homes (or condos) per day. The average price was just under $1.2 mil with the median at roughly $900,000. Both these numbers were below our norm for the year, likely due to an inordinate number of closings in the lower end of the price range in all towns. The average Days On Market (DOM) for a sale to ratify and close continued in the 60 day range.

Going forward, buyers have only 475 total homes, condos, farms or ranches to choose from (not that there are ever many of the latter). We don’t look for that supply to change dramatically as November is more of a transitional month for new listings. Many people either pull their homes off the market or decline to put them on as the holidays are widely celebrated in our bedroom communities. Winter also tends to shed less favorable light (literally) on many properties as filtered sun through trees or forests often appears less-appealing to many buyers, most of whom prefer natural light over man made. Given that our county is 75% hillside, a good number of those properties will be north-facing, garnering even fewer rays from Mister Sun than their southern oriented neighbors.

Still, there’s “a rear for every seat” as I heard a sage old investor say years ago. (Picture his real phrase to be one that relates to a donkey, though). No matter how dark, unusual or even outright repulsive a home may seem to you, chances are somebody may like it. I recall one of my first sales back in the 80’s, when I had a listing that, literally, hung right over the freeway. Every agent and prospective buyer that came through, was turned off by the roar of all six (now eight) lanes of highway 101 right out the back door. But towards the end of my second Open House, an Emergency Room surgeon from SF walked through the front doorway, past the living room and out onto the deck at the traffic whizzing by below. “Great, I can see the freeway, I’ll take it”, or roughly something like that. As far as I know, he still lives there today as I’ve yet to see the home come back on the market. And there you have it.

Buyers, if you’re looking for that hard-to-find seat, make sure your agent is in one of the two top network groups, mostly compromised of the busiest 100 agents in the county. We often have extensive off-market inventory: properties a seller is willing to show on an appointment basis, that isn’t necessarily on MLS. These are sometimes “coming to the market after January 1st” or recently withdrawn for the holidays, but nearly all of them can be seen with some notice. With interest rates still hovering near record low levels, it’s a great time to buy a home in Marin without competing with the 100+ other buyers out there on any given Sunday.

So enjoy November, wherever you are. Let me know how I can help with any questions. Text 415.377.5222 or email ted@allmarin.com, but I also do take the archaic method of the phone call and will be happy to assist however I can.

Ted

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by Ted Strodder