Having hit a two-decade high last week, the number of homes on the market in San Francisco, net of all sales and contract activity, both pending and closed, has since inched down 3 percent to just under 2,000, a move which shouldn’t have caught any plugged-in readers by surprise.

That being said, there are still twice as many homes on the market now than there were at the same time last year (versus nearly 20 percent lower nationwide), over three times as many homes on the market as there were on the market in October of 2015, and around 20 percent more, on average, than during the Great Recession, with the number of condos on the market (1,470) up 120 percent on a year-over-year basis and single-family home inventory, which hit a 9-year high earlier this month, now up 44 percent (and climbing).

But as we noted last week, and last month as well, “listed inventory levels typically peak in October, at which point new listing activity typically slows and unsold homes are more likely to be withdrawn from the market (and then re-listed anew in the spring).”

At the same time, asking price cuts, which hit a new 10-year high in the absolute earlier this month, continue to tick up, with the asking price for 35 percent of the homes on the market having been reduced at least once, which includes 29 percent of all the single family homes, is 9 percentage points higher than at the same time last year, and represents the highest percentage of reduced listings since the first quarter of 2012.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

9 thoughts on “Number of Homes for Sale in S.F. Has Likely Peaked”
  1. I’m curious to see what happens with SFH through the winter and whether we’ll see inventory drop or stay high

  2. I happened to text 3 friends, over the weekend, who are all single but in diff age groups, and all 3 of them are back home with families, in Palo Alto or on the East Coast. But all “exodus” are temp and all will return in Jan 2021…. So will see what happens in 2021

    1. Are they renters or buyers? I am curious how much of a return wave we’ll see and how that may revive the rental market but it feels like buyers are a different group, I could be wrong.

      1. Of these 3 friends, 1 owns and 2 rent. Age from 28 to 39. I guess I was fully expecting a 20 something to “go back home”, but did not expect a 39 to “go back home,” So the “exodus” was worse than I thought.

        1. Interesting. I’m in the 20s “go back home” category, planning to buy in SF, but sort of waiting to see what happens and/or until I find the perfect place.

          1. I think if you are targeting the kind of properties that attracts Googlers, your runway is going to be a lot shorter than mine…. I am looking to buy a 4-8 unit small building, and given how low the rents are, I think I have a good 2 years to play the field…..We will see

          2. After initially looking at SFH, I’m actually looking mostly at 2-unit buildings, but I haven’t been focusing on that for long so I don’t have a good feel yet.

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