California Market vs. Everywhere else

[Northern_IL]

As you already know, I'm in Northern Illinois.

I have a client that lives in the San Fransisco Bay area, and owns a 2nd home here. He's always comparing the activities of our market to California.

Marketing and advertising wise, everything seems to be relatively close. However, he claims that there are a "fury of people" that come in and out of listings and there are "multiple offers all the time".

Can someone from the California market give me a few blurbs as to what you are seeing on your showing activity? How many showings per week are you seeing on your listings? What's the average market time of homes out there?

Thank you for your insight.

[Oaklandhomespecialist]

As you already know, I'm in Northern Illinois.

I have a client that lives in the San Fransisco Bay area, and owns a 2nd home here. He's always comparing the activities of our market to California.

Marketing and advertising wise, everything seems to be relatively close. However, he claims that there are a "fury of people" that come in and out of listings and there are "multiple offers all the time".

Can someone from the California market give me a few blurbs as to what you are seeing on your showing activity? How many showings per week are you seeing on your listings? What's the average market time of homes out there?

Thank you for your insight.

In Oakland it's spotty. In the nicest areas, things are moving pretty briskly and multiple offers are not uncommon. However in other areas, mainly the flatlands and areas closest to them, it's really tough for sellers and the number of showings and the turnout for open houses, brokers tour etc is much lower than previous years.

I just got into contract on a home in Upper Rockrige (nice area, fingers crossed)). The home was listed at $950k, there was one other offer in addition to ours so we ended up in a multiple counter offer situation. We got countered at $985k, and asking for a shorter escrow, a 3% initial deposit and 7 day contingencies. We countered back with $990k, agreeing to all other conditions and got accepted.

So like I said it just depends, I was talking to an agent at an open house who last week wrote an offer on a home, and they were one out of 9 total offers on that home. Oakland doesn't have cookie cutter homes, so things can vary widely from street to street even.

Average DOM is about 45 days right now, so some are in escrow in a few days, others take a lot longer.

[Discover Davis Homes]

I think it depends where in the bay area your client lives. My guess is that San Francisco itself is pretty strong, there just isn't any land to build more houses. Condominiums in SF can run over 1 Mil. The further you get though from SF or Silicon Valley, the more the market mimics the rest of the country. Some areas are seeing quite a few short sales and foreclosures. It is all dependant on location/proximity to jobs. Certain parts of the SF Bay Area will always have a housing shortage, too little inventory for people wanting to buy/live in a certain area.

In the "hot" market of a few years ago, it was common in the outlying parts of the bay for an average house to get 4-6 showings a week and an offer in less than a month. In the core areas many homes would get multiple offers within 7 to 14 days of being on the market. If you want more specific information, please let me know. I lived in the outer edge of the SF Bay Area until last year when I moved to Davis which is more an outlying area of Sacramento.

[gregharaksin]

a shorter escrow, a 3% initial deposit and 7 day contingencies

We use this as a standard counter. I hate it when I have the buyer. But we never have any deals fall out of escrow.

[EFS Webmaster]

As previously mentioned, you need to qualify your friend and ask "where in the San Francisco Bay Area"?

If they are speaking about the CITY of San Francisco, what they are referring to is very typical. What will often happen is a property will be listed, held open (brokers & 2 sunday tours) and then the listing agent will let prospective buyers know that "offers will be reviewed on "date x". If the property is desirable, then it's very common for multiple offers to come in on date x (and many agents will often try to submit pre-emptive offers for their clients).

Keep in mind that San Francisco housing options are somewhat limited since the city is only 7 x 7 miles, buildable land is hard to come by, and building vertical to address a shortage of available housing isn't an option that has been warmly embraced by the city.

This type of competitive situation is something you typically see less and less the further you get away from the city with a few notable exceptions. For instance:
- Silicone Valley (~ 30-45 miles S of San Francisco) is another "epicenter" of competitive activity,
- Certain areas in the East Bay (~ 2 - 10+ miles East of San Francisco / just across the Bay Bridge) are very desirable and represent another "epicenter".
- Certain areas in the North Bay / Marin County ( 2-10+ miles North of San Francisco / just across the Golden Gate Bridge) are very desirable and represent another "epicenter".

The area we service includes San Francisco and Marin County (where the median home price is consistently floating around $1M) and the market is still quite bullish although multiple offer situations aren't as common now as they were a year or two ago. That being said, desirable properties are still getting a lot of action and are selling at or above the asking price.

[Northern_IL]

You guys just answered why I'm having such a problem. It's easy to see why this guy is so upset after just 2-weeks on the market.

Haven't had this many problems with a client in my entire real estate career. Makes all my other "high maintenance" clients look like lambs.

[Discover Davis Homes]

I would make sure he has facts about days on market, months of inventory, list price vs. sales price. Give him some hard data about what he can expect in YOUR market.

[Homesurfer]

Cool back yard, Discover!

[Bigtoe]

Y'all need to let the folks on TV know how good the market is in California. The news people make it sound like a ghost town in decline.

[Lewi]

Here in my hometown the newspaper has negative articles on the front page seemingly every day, its scarring the potential buyers away. Seems whenever there is something to say the media always takes the negative approach. Wouldn't it be nice to look at the good things in the world occasinally? That must be unthinkable for them, a home buyer getting a good buy doesn't make news in thier opinions.