The pace of single-family home and condo sales in San Francisco ticked down three points over the past week, with 13 percent fewer homes in contract to be sold than there were at the same time last year, 44 percent fewer than in December of 2021, 58 percent fewer than in December of 2020 and 37 percent fewer homes in contract than there were in December of 2019, prior to the pandemic having hit and at which point there were 50 percent fewer homes on the market, not more.
In fact, despite a drop in mortgage rates over the past two months, pending home sales in San Francisco remain at their lowest level on a seasonally adjusted basis in over six years, with an average asking price per square foot of the homes which are in contract down over 10 percent over the past 16 months and having averaged under $900 per square foot over the past quarter, none of which should catch any plugged-in readers, other than the most obstinate, by surprise.
An aggregate decrease of less than 15 percent over the past 16 months means S.F. is doing pretty well given the overarching “doom loop” discourse about The City and the number and concentration of layoffs here (prominent robotaxi company Cruise announced plans to lay off 24% of its staff last week, with about 375 of the laid-off workers based in San Francisco, and Cruise’s headquarters in the South Beach neighborhood seeing the largest cut) over that same time period. The runup immediately prior to the pandemic was probably much more than that, and I say that as someone who would love for the price level to reset to a meaningfully lower level.