Two weeks ago we made a relatively bold forecast that year-over-year home appreciation in San Francisco would dip below 6%, and could potentially drop to as low as 4% (based on April closings). Well, it looks like we were off by 0.4%.
According to DataQuick, the median sales price in San Francisco was $778,000 last month, up 3.6% from $751,000 in April ’05. In addition, sales volume in San Francisco was down 27% as compared to the year prior (497 versus 681 sales), and perhaps even more telling, sales volume dropped over 11% as compared to March ’06 (561 sales).
For the greater Bay Area, the recorded median sales price in April was $628,000 (up 7.2% year-over-year) and sales volume was 8,358 (down 14.2% from March ’06 and down 25.1% from April ’05).
∙ DataQuick Reports Part 2: The SocketSite Insight [SocketSite]
∙ Bay Area home sales and appreciation slow; new price peak [DQNews]
I think it is misleading to take sales volume figures or median prices at face value. Dataquick, the MLS and similar sources do not account for new home sales. Right now, as you know, there is an explosion of new home sales in the South Beach, Rincon Hill and SOMA areas of the City. The Beacon has sold or is in contract to sell around 500 units, the Palms are over 65% sold or in contract, the St. Regis (with an average asking price of around $2.2M)has sold over 100 units, the Metropolitan (340+ units), 81 Lansing, 200 Brannan/1Federal, The Glassworks, 188 King, 255 Berry… and the list goes on and on. NONE of these sales are being reported.
This is from the DQNews website:
“DataQuick has the most comprehensive, current and accurate national database of real estate information. The data is keyed directly from county recorder and assessor’s records. “
Unless the sales at new developments are not recorded at city offices, they’re accounted for, no?
Where’s the crash? We hit a NEW RECORD for the Bay Area for price 🙂
Take a look at the London market case study. London is ON FIRE.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20060517/bs_bw/gb20060516070520
Unfortunately the answer is no. I have personally gone down to the assessor’s office to try and locate sales data for many of these new construction projects and the developers have managed to obscure the information by printing sales prices and other information on seperate tax documents that are unavailable to the general public. The title companies responsible for handling the escrows are also forced to sign confidentiality agreements with the developers. For sales of existing homes DataQuick has excellent information, however new homes sales data is kept out of their hands. I think the reason is that if the brokerage community catches wind of the discounts developers are willing to agree to, agents in the interest of protecting their clients best interests will negotiate for those prices. If you do find a way to find accurate sales data for any of the afore mentioned projects…inquiring minds want to know.
It’s official: Greenspan said on May 18, “The boom is over. I think we can safely say that with a strong degree of confidence.” (http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-19T004329Z_01_N18356846_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-GREENSPAN.xml).
That’s kinda disturbing about the obfuscation of sales prices for new units. I understand that it’s in the developer’s best interest to do that, but it seems like another instance where RE industry folks are hiding significant data from individuals that are making what is usually the largest financial decision they will ever make. Is it really legal?
Data Quick and publications like Socket Site should be ashamed to continue to report false sales data. To not report the real data, including all sales of new homes and condominiums in San Francisco is an act of fraud. Considering the amount of non reported sales, (estimated to be over 25% of the total market), leads to mistrust of the rest of the data published on this site.
If you want to be respected, get the real information.
The St Regis just completed the sale of 106 condominiums at an average price of $2.4 million. That is 400% over the market reported by Data Quick for high end condo’s. Just reporting those sales would change the suggested reduction in the median selling price of 3.6% for march.