Make no mistake, the number of single-family homes and condos which are currently listed for sale in San Francisco (570) is still roughly half the number which were on the market at this time of the year back in 2007 (1,190), a number which increased by another thirty percent by 2010 (1,600) and then started to drop in 2011 as the typical turnover of homes and the supply of new listings was upended by an inability to sell for more than had been paid.
At this time last year, however, there were roughly 570 homes on the market in San Francisco, which means that while inventory is still a third of what it was at its peak, it’s now even on a year-over-year basis for the first time in over two years.
On an absolute basis, the supply of homes for sale in San Francisco typically spikes in September, peaks in October and then drops through the end of the year.

11 thoughts on “For The First Time In Over Two Years, Inventory Is Even In SF”
  1. makes sense. With the increase in prices, it’s got to bring sellers back into the market…particularly those who want to cash in and move to cheaper locales (retirees) or folks who were stuck in places that were underwater, but may not be anymore. Not to mention contractors pumping out the remodels so often featured here.
    Shouldn’t we expect this to accelerate, as crowd psychology becomes convinced that it’s finally a good time to sell, and also as people start worrying that with rising interest rates prices might come under pressure later?
    For buyers’ sake, I hope it gets a little less bubbly with all these incredible overbids.

  2. Ha, inventory Finally gets a mention. Quite the coincidence it happens at the exact time the YOY is no longer down!
    Inventory and mix – the comeback!

  3. If only there was some way to visualize this phenomenon over the past few years??? :). Of course, inventory is also impacted by total number of sales so looking at one data point without the other can skew perspective on the data. Certainly inventory is going to be higher if fewer homes are turning over on a monthly basis as I suspect they were in 2010.
    I’ve said this elsewhere, however, I believe that there is an overabundance of lower-priced listings in the market and that there are still relatively few single family homes and prime condos.

  4. It is the same yoy – and both times are the lowest it has been all year, and probably in many, many year. This is DREADFUL inventory. Curmudgeon – I think you misread it – there is no trend up yet. The editor is saying Sept/Oct usually sees more inventory. We can only hope. The “good news” is it can’t go lower. This is absurdly low inventory.
    [Editor’s Note: Not quite. As is typical, inventory levels have been building since the beginning of the year and are now 15 percent higher than five months ago when they were 30 percent lower year-over-year.]

  5. Inventory in Noe Valley may be ticking up slightly but still stands at a measly 3 weeks worth. Ive not seen anything like this in 12 years of following this market. September mAy tell a different story.

  6. Half gutted 948 Hampshire sold for $940K on a $629K teaser listing. 1215 sq ft. of mostly gutted SFH. Went into escrow in under 2 weeks.
    944 Hampshire (immediately next to it) sold for $1.68M a few weeks ago as well after being completely re-done early last year.
    Definitely a good time to be selling your SFH, at least in the mission.

  7. It looks like the initial lump or Facebook IPO money has been absorbed and we are now returning to a more normal, though still very hot market.
    The Twitter IPO is coming up though, so don’t really expect things to cool off too much.

  8. “944 Hampshire (immediately next to it) sold for $1.68M a few weeks ago”
    Wow you tech people are our of your damn minds.

  9. I’d love to see some sort of report/research that actually looks at the composition of ‘inventory’ today vs prior years. Echoing what some readers above have suggested, it seems most of the properties now on the market are lower quality or primarily fixer inventory (e.g. 948 Hampshire, or in the last few days, 439 Hill Street; 1br/1ba sold for $1.205mm vs list of $995k). Inventory count and quality are of course completely unrelated…and compounding the challenge of figuring out what’s actually going on, you have many examples like 439 Hill where the property is being priced solely on the basis of what it can/should/will yield when renovated and priced in line with neighbors, so both per square foot averages (effect: too high) and neighborhood averages (effect: too low) are skewed in strange ways. Great time to be on the sidelines rather than fighting the insanity…

  10. Editor – you’re welcome to post a link to your facts – that inventory is 30% higher than earlier in the year. But I check the MLS nearly every day and total residential units (sfr’s, condos thru tic’s) have hovered around 600 (at 598 right now) ALL year long and at most have been +/1 10% and always coming back to around the 600 level.
    Now I’m not tracking over a month long span – but I just looked at total sales per the MLS in the 6 months from 2/1/13 thru 7/31/13 vs. the same 2012 period. 3004 in 2012 3083 in 2013 or a 2.63% change. So I see zero evidence that inventory is up 30%.
    So if you have different facts, feel free to share them.
    [Editor’s Note: A poorly written note on our part is to blame and hopefully since clarified. Five months ago listings were 30 percent fewer on a year-over-year basis (mid-March versus mid-March), a gap which has narrowed to even with 15 percent more inventory in the absolute. Keep in mind we don’t include listings which are in contract.]

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