Marin Real Estate Blog

October is here and the weather has just turned to fall in the last few days. Cooler mornings and evenings become the norm and a few leaves scatter on the ground, but it’s still one of our nicest months with a lot happening in the county. The Mill Valley Film Festival kicks off in the first half of the month, with pumpkin patch jumpys in at least a dozen locations for the kids to burn off that pent up energy.

Speaking of energy, the housing market ramped right back up after Labor Day, pretty much as we were expecting. Multiple offers were out there in force, but, as always, usually just on the well-priced homes in the lower price ranges of each town and in the good locations. These are the near-bullet proof properties here: they were the last to fall in value during the mortgage meltdown and the first to recover strongly in early 2011. Given that Marin is only now back to where prices were in 2006, they are still considered to be “cheap” by many standards, even though those standards are some of the most “uncheap” in the country. Why is that?

Well, I can’t speak for what other counties don’t have, but I can tell you what Marin does have. It’s what traditionally has kept us at the forefront of housing values over the last 65 years, which is when they started keeping track of the data. That is: quality of life. If you want terrific weather with four real seasons of the year, no smog, no real crime and some of the best schools in the state (both public and private), it’s going to cost you. Throw in with that our no-growth mandate (often called “low growth”) and the lowest attrition rate in the state, with very few people moving out of the county and you have a recipe for a tight housing market. We don’t have Manhattan or Malibu home prices here, but we do have Marin prices and a quality of life and outdoors that neither of those areas can boast about.

Think about it. Where else are you going to find roughly 75% protected open space in a vast county of 520 square miles and only 258,000 people, this close to three major employment centers (SF, Oakland, Silicon Valley), this close to open beaches, a bay, hiking, biking, walking and Lake Tahoe? No place I know of and you can see why the demand to live here continues and pushes our population to increase each year by approx 1% annually, yet we aren’t adding any housing units to speak of, certainly not 2,580 anyway.

Will prices continue up? Probably. They’ve only dropped once in the last 60 years, as they did in the rest of the country, and that was due to factors way outside the dynamics of living in Marin: it was a global and national mortgage meltdown, nothing changed throughout the county. And during that five year slide down, you know what happened to our housing inventory? It also dropped. People stayed, they didn’t leave town. They chose quality of life for themselves and their families over the vacation house, the boat, or the extra car. They somehow figured this was a great place to live and did what they could to stay here. What do you think? Let me know.

Meantime, enjoy October wherever you are. Let me know of any questions. I’m here to help.

TS

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog by AgentImage

September: the kids are back in school and one of our nicest months for warm, fog-free weather. Stinson and Bolinas beaches often see the most visitors this month as locals and out of towners alike rent homes out there for long weekends or even a full week. But with our normal Indian Summer likely in place, this month and next are often talked about as a favorite time for many Marin residents.Speaking of normal, we’re all looking for the supply of homes for sale begin its return to a normal state, bringing with it a less frenetic resale market. Since 2007, when prices started to fall, so did the supply of properties for sale here. It surprised many of us, but people let go of their stocks or second homes, but not where they lived. We slowly went from an average of 1400 homes and condo’s for sale to only 700 today, and that current number is actually high. We’ve been as low as 500. While our inventory has basically been cut in half, the percentage of homes in escrow has steadily risen, yielding 40% – 50% of the market properties under contract, whereas it used to hover around 30%. We looked at this as an anomaly for the first few years, thinking it was just going to turn back the other way and more people were going to decide to sell, rather than hunker down. But hunker they did. Why? Well, we aren’t completely sure, but I can tell you that “quality of home life” had a lot to do with it. They didn’t (or don’t) need a condo up at Tahoe, which is far cheaper to rent anyway, and they didn’t (or don’t) have much faith in the volatility of the stock market, so they decided to stay in their houses and take permanent shelter. On top of that, another factor kicked in, starting in 2010: people started pouring back into California and the population began to rise again after a three year drop. And of the millions of people who moved here, where do you think a small percentage of them wanted to live? You guessed it, right here. And with Marin being basically a zero growth county, it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that your fixed supply of homes are going to increase in value. Sure enough, in 2011, it’s like somebody flipped a switch and the buyers started to buy again, with no end in sight. So given the dynamics in place, what’s a buyer to do? Well, probably “buy” I’d say. While you may think prices are high now after a three year run-up, we’re only now back to where they were in 2007 in half of the county. The northern half still has a bit to go, but not much. If you’re here for more than two years, go ahead and purchase. If not, go ahead and rent, but try to lock in two years. Rents are going up as fast as home prices, also now back to where they were at the high. Meantime, enjoy September wherever you are. Let me know of any questions. I’m here to help. TS Text or call 415.377.5222 Email ted@allmarin.com

Filed under: Marin Real Estate Blog, Uncategorized by AgentImage