Sales volume for listed single-family homes in San Francisco fell 6% on a year-over-year basis in June (219 transactions in 2008 versus 205 in 2009), up 19% versus May (and versus a 6% drop from May to June in 2008) according to San Francisco Schtuff.
Listed single-family home sales in “Prime” District 7 nearly doubled on a year-over-year basis (from 10 in 2008 to 17 in 2009), but on a 43% drop in median sales price (a 48% drop in average).
Single Family Homes June ‘04, ‘06, ‘08, ‘09 [sanfranciscoschtuff.com]
San Francisco Listed Sales Volume In May: Down 37% YOY [SocketSite]
San Francisco Real Estate Districts: Maps And Neighborhoods [SocketSite]

15 thoughts on “Listed San Francisco Single-Family Home June Sales: Down 6% YOY”
  1. excellent news.
    it just goes to show the obvious:
    if you drop prices you will get more sales.
    this will help clear the RE inventory.

    unfortunately I believe this California budget nonsense is a huge headwind. especially since the banks will only accept the CaIOU’s this week.
    that is, unless you can use an IOU to buy a house?

  2. well, down 6% is much better than down 27% which was last months figure for listed SFHs.
    remember also, that for SFHs there is no extra inventory – at least not compared to last year (down YOY).
    since March each month seems to have been strong, even allowing for seasonality.
    any chance a seasonality update?

  3. I’m sorry, how is YoY SFH sales DOWN 6% “excellent news”?
    sorry, should have elaborated:
    seems as though the rate of decline of sales may be slowing. (in other words, improvement of the second derivative).
    it’s better than the near freefall of the past.
    of course, this was bound to happen at some point (can’t have 20-30% sales volume drops forever)… but it’s better to see it earlier rather than later IMO.

  4. I would look more to inventory and sales prices more than sales volume. The numbers of transactions in SF is so low that its hard to do good statistically analysis. Comparing 10 sales versus 17 is not very informative, because the numbers are so small.

  5. I have a suspicion that sales and prices are going to drop significantly over the winter, I don’t see this summer as being particularly good, and there’s lots of bad stuff going on right now, and can be expected to persist. Job losses are still growing faster than expected, foreclosures are expected to increase significantly in the next few months, people are not spending, and I expect this Christmas season to be very bad.
    I don’t think we’ll see a bottoming in the market until next spring at the earliest.

  6. I agree Byron, but the inventory has stabilized somewhat as well. (at elevated levels).
    these can be construed as very early signs of a slowing in the RE freefall we had.
    this of course means nothing when it comes to “bottoms” or “recovery”. we’ll need to see increased sales combined with decreased inventory and stable to increased pricing before I’d mention anything about recovery. And my guess for some time has been that we won’t see those signs for quite some time. (in the past I used the date Dec 2011 as the end of the pressure on RE and see no reason to change that opinion).
    There are three major headwinds I see for SF RE right now that can worsen the picture
    1) California is bankrupt. it is unclear to me how this will be resolved, except that clearly it will be difficult on the state. (either higher taxes or reduced services or something). This IOU mess is just the first manifestation of this. Later when the prayed for federal bailout happens my guess is that there will be a pound of flesh taken in return for the bailout. This will impact SF RE due to either higher taxation or through cutting of services (which may mean lower income to state employees which causes lower demand typically causing lower RE pricing again)
    2) we still have 2.5 years of RE pain due to the resets/recasts of the crappy mortgages written in 2005-2007. that will put pressure on RE through increased foreclosures/short sales, and also through the continued pain on the banks which will require them to continue being stingy on credit. this reduces the dollars available for RE.
    3) we are still in the throes of recession, despite the idiotic calls of “green shoots” that came with the most recent bear market rally. There has been little fundamental improvement in the macroeconomic picture of our economy, except that we avoided an impending total market collapse last fall. but it is increasingly likely we face an “L” shaped recovery or a double dip “W” recovery or at best a “jobless” recovery. the persistent unemployment does not bode well for jobs.
    As market sentiment returns bearish it is likely we’ll see some slowing in the housing sector again.
    thus, I’d say the headline news is “excellent” news. it doesn’t negate the significant headwinds, but it is a start.

  7. I’ve been thinking this financial zombification could be intentional, setting us up for a 21st-century style executive order 6102. If true (not likely though), it’s actually good news.
    Zombification (and low interest rates) is now seeding the RE market with solvent purchasers. Zombification allows them to conclude that 10-15% off is a good deal, and since it’s their money, more power to them.
    This belief keeps the markets functioning, keeps more folks employed (on the dime of the solvent, instead of the taxpayer), and aids price discovery.
    After private capital is lured in, there could be a massive writeoff/purge, probably precipitated by the market somehow, like Oct was. This will have the effect of Roosevelt’s 6102, and will cost the taxpayer less money, functioning instead as a “solvency tax”.
    I don’t think they are this smart though — it sounds like basic institutional capture to me.
    They are already talking about a second stimulus, as if this is a mild inventory recession, not a major credit recession.

  8. BDB:
    I find it humorous that *I’m* being called “optimistic”. ROFL.
    I can still acknowledge (semi)-positive data points when they arrive, even though I continue to see significant future RE pain.
    this “excellent” data point only shows that the freefall has slowed which is a good thing IMO. we want an orderly unwind, not a collapse… again IMO.
    put into context it is not overly surprising either. sales numbers are improving (or getting less worse) in large part because prices are falling. The slowing of the drop in sales volumes (or sales volumes going up) is a *good* thing as it shows that finally we’re nearing a “clearing” price for RE. this increases liquidity for RE which helps improve price discovery.
    all of that is “good”.

  9. @Ex-SFer
    “it just goes to show the obvious:
    if you drop prices you will get more sales.”
    Except prices dropped AND volume dropped.

  10. A lot of the D7 sales are sort of “deferred” sales that normally would’ve happened earlier this year. This was an unusually busy June. A lot of the sales were properties protected by prop 13 that started with a much lower price point. For this area, I expect a jump in median and sales volume for July.

  11. ex SF-er – I agree that it appears the pace of decline is slowing and that it is a “good thing” as Martha would say.
    But reading those links that describe another big wave of foreclosures looming I am not sure if this is nothing more then the eye of the storm.

  12. Except prices dropped AND volume dropped.
    yes, but the rate of the drop slowed. (improvement of the second derivative). it’s hard to write about that using English without sounding technical and dry. Prices dropped and volume dropped more slowly than it did previously.
    But reading those links that describe another big wave of foreclosures looming I am not sure if this is nothing more then the eye of the storm.
    I agree. to be clear, in the 2-3 years that I’ve been posting here I don’t recall ever once saying that RE has any sort of positive future in SF or most of the US. I only remarked that the above headline post is excellent news as we may be reaching a point where the market can start clearing.
    that point will of course be at lower price levels than today, which will cause significant pain to many players. But that point must come nonetheless. I welcome an orderly unwind of RE bubble prices.
    we still face an economic depression. That hasn’t changed over the last year. What did change is that the Govt succeeded in averting a total instantaneous collapse of our entire market economy. we now have to plod through the recession/depression which is going to be a doozy. That has been known to everybody who is paying attention for 2 years now.
    That doesn’t mean that there won’t be positive economic news once in a while.
    so to sum it all up: I’m extremely bearish on San Francisco Real Estate. But the above headline number shows a slowing of the second derivative of negative housing sales, which is excellent news. that second derivative can obviously change again especially given the three major factors I listed above (bankrupt state leading to higher taxes/less services, 2.5 years minimum of foreclosure/short sale/bank pain leading to restricted credit and a flood of homes on market, and recession causing decreased disposable income leading to less demand for housing).
    There are caveats though. One cannot predict the future of any single asset class with 100% clarity when there is such huge amount of government involvement in that market. The govt is run by politics, not economics, and thus they could make a political decision that significantly affects future housing prices. They have been very fond of making sweeping ad hoc decisions of late. who knows what they’ll decide next?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *