While sales volume for listed single-family homes in San Francisco gained 2% on a year-over-year basis in July, condo sales volume fell 28.5% (228 transactions in July 2008 versus 163 in 2009), up 16% from June versus a 27% increase from June to July in 2008.
Combined listed single-family and condo sales volume dropped 13% YOY in July.
With respect to condos, the most pronounced drop in listed sales volume occurred in District 9, dropping 34% (from 88 sales in July of 2008 to 54 sales in July of 2009) on a 23% drop in median sales price from $749,500 to $577,500. Once again, think (and either thank or curse) new development sales offices discounting and stealing share.
Listed condo sales volume in District 5 dropped from 36 to 30 sales year-over-year in July on a 17% drop in median sales price and an 18% drop in average.
∙ Condos and Lofts July ‘04, ‘06, ‘08, ‘09 [sanfranciscoschtuff.com]
∙ Listed San Francisco Single-Family Home Sales In July: Up 2% YOY [SocketSite]
∙ San Francisco Listed Sales Volume In June: Down 14% YOY [SocketSite]
∙ San Francisco Real Estate Districts: Maps And Neighborhoods [SocketSite]
What about actual sales price drops ? Anyone have really and recent stats ?
I want to know when I can drop a down payment on that Pacific Heights apple that I have been eying !
wow. huge drop in D9. i think a lot of y2k construction is taking a hit at the cost of all the new development. lofts are getting hammered.
potrero hill seems to be holding up better though.
The median and average in D5 are 17% and 18% under last year. It confirms the datapoint our dear SS editor has provided us so far. A few places holding their own, a few trainwrecks. On average a more affordable city which is good for everyone.
Fronzi, I think those numbers are for condos. D5 yoy SFH price stats are down 21% (median) and 26% (average) for July, on significantly higher volume than 7/2008.
https://socketsite.com/archives/2009/08/listed_san_francisco_singlefamily_home_sales_in_july_up.html
Defnitely going in the right direction! Maybe D5 is half way through the nominal price correction? Time will tell, but the price declines are encouraging.
LMRiM,
Condo indeed. I assumed that was a given from the header. Good to restate it though. We always run the risk of being taken out of context and get the consequent one-liners that fuel on themselves forever.
It’s not only District 9 now (funny there’s a South African movie with that title coming up. The place looks gritty a bit like some parts of D9), but D5 and others. And it’s not 5-10% anymore. That boat has sailed 6 months ago.
The sand castle crumbled from the bottom last year and now the towers have not much to sit on, totally unprepared for the next wave of debt defaults.
The Infinity reports over 175 condo closings (both towers) since January. Millennium Tower has closed 40 since April.
surprised some of you seasoned posters are using the median and even average!) prices for one district for one month for a guide where prices are heading..
from those d5 median sfh stats you could also deduce the following..
10% above 2006 pricing
nearly 30% above 2004 pricing..
but back to condos, yes these price declines are not surprising given the increasing inventory and declining sales. but of ocurse, with the new developments stealing share as mentioned, significant mix changes are also likely going on.
REpornaddict,
Median and average are useful indicators of trend, but are of course going to be incomplete. Because they can only account for realized sales, they are a step removed from describing acual value trends. In most environments (certainly in D5), they are going to understate “true” value declines even if you make some mix adjustment, primarily because of (1) beauty pageant effects (nicer houses sell, and so the 10% nicer house sells for “only” 10% under the price a “10% less desirable” place sold for the previous year); and (2) loss aversion (people are reluctant to sell “losers” and so try to avoid realizing losses in most markets).
That’s why the “apples” are always so useful, but again even the apples are going to exhibit selection bias on the basis of loss aversion (e.g., one apple sells for 10% under last year, but another that would sell for 30% under is pulled from the market because the homemoaner cannot face the loss – and so we don’t see the “average” of the two declines,)
Fortunately, all the stats are pointing one way, down, and that’s a great trend. We’ll only be able to quantify the declines with some precision well in the future when there are much larger sets of data to mine.
A couple of points to add to the mix. According to ForeclosureRadar, trustee sales in SF were up to 81 in July, an increase from 70 in June and 57 in July ’08. This is not directly reflected in the MLS sales numbers but with only 386 listed SFR and condo sales, 81 completed foreclosures (and rising) in the mix is now becoming a significant portion of the SF market. Notices of trustee sales were also up in July — to 210, up from 143 in June and 148 in July ’08. The various moratoria are basically ended so we’re only going to see more foreclosures in the mix.
Also, remember FSBO — smart guy who ran some extremely interesting MLS analyses? He had a theory called “5 Fridays” — since closings tend to occur on a Friday, months with 5 Fridays will get an artificial bump in the sales totals. July ’09 was a 5 Fridays month (July ’08 was not), so that alone very well may have added a not insignificant bump to the ’09 numbers.
So far, we don’t see any rebound in sales, although we also haven’t seen the increase in listings I would have expected, so the downward price pressure is substantial but nevertheless less intense than I would have predicted (except at the higher end where sales are nearly dead). Let’s see what August (only 4 Fridays in ’09, but 5 Fridays in ’08) brings . . .
Huh?
1. Trust sales are everywhere within the MLS.
2. Closings tend to happen on Fridays? No, they don’t. Back when SF had “special” Friday closings they used to. That has not been the case for years. Closings happen any day of the week.
Properties tend to enter the market on Fridays, not to leave it.
“Trust sales are everywhere within the MLS”
Correct, but not the month the trustee sale is completed but in a later month when the lender re-sells. Thus, my point that the July increase in trustee sales is not directly reflected in July MLS sales data. The rising, current foreclosures will get listed later.
We’ll see how the 5 Fridays hypothesis plays out. Maybe there is nothing to it. Maybe there is. August may give us some indication.
On point one, OK, let’s see. Wow. You subscribe to Foreclosure Radar? I had it for a while but it wasn’t as useful as I wanted it to be. Maybe I’ll get it again. It would stand to reason that post moratoriums more properties in desirable neighborhoods will become available. We’ll see. The problem so far has been that the borrower staves off the sale and the tracker is unaware until the courthouse steps. I went down there a lot. This is due to red tape, as banks don’t update any info until they absolutely have to.
The person who comes up with a better way for banks to manage properties, whether disposing of them or maintaining them, will stand to make a lot of money. An efficient system is sorely lacking. The talk is always, “Banks don’t want to be in the business of managing property.” Yes, true. But tough luck. They’re stuck with that role. What ever happened to necessity being the father of invention?
The 5 Fridays thing should add to inventory, not take it away.
The data is interesting but I find the relentless battle of opposing viewpoints exhausting. Thank god there are others who keep battling on.. For me, I’ve long felt that using data in real estate as a point driver is simply fraught with too many holes due to the limited data sets and other factors. Case Shiller has the best method since it’s consistent; not perfect but better than any other attempt out there.
The best source of indications / trends is to just get out there and talk to buyers / sellers and to watch the market. There is still a lot of fear and uncertanty out there on all sides. Gone are confidence, egos and arrogance that drove prices up. The reality is that buyers drive the market and lack of competition out there is giving buyers the upper hand. Buyer confidence cahnges from week to week, but in the end this is allowing the market to define. These numbers reinforce what I’m seeing / feeling in the market and its undeniable.
“The 5 Fridays thing should add to inventory, not take it away.”
Well, under this hypothesis, if there are more closings, that would mean more sales for the month. This thread concerns monthly sales figures.
I have no idea what your point is on trustee sales and MLS listings. Regardless, no, I don’t subscribe to ForeclosureRadar, but it’s reproduced all over the place.
Umm… are all datapoints pointing to things going down? Or are datapoints point to the fact that things have gone down. Don’t confuse your wishful thinking (affordable real estate for the masses in the country’s second most dense city… yay!) with reality. Who is speculating now??
A lot more properties are thrown into the MLS mix on Fridays than the amount of Friday closings. The reasons are two fold. First, new entries has to do with a noon Friday deadline in order to be on the following week’s broker’s tour. Secondly, there’s this. Often the new buyer doesn’t want a Friday close. There are no Friday afternoon closings in SF, and new borrowers would rather not carry the extra two days of interest. So again, throw that 5 Fridays of sales out the window. Or believe what you want about a hobbyist’s theory.
You think in this lending environment buyers get to choose their closing date? No, the deal closes when the bank works through it’s red tape and funds the loan. Stats on time from contract to close should bear this out.
I don’t think, I know. You’re right by and large, but we were speaking about Fridays in particular. Fridays in SF are their own thing as there are no afternoon recordings.
Trip, nice work digging up the NOTS data. I see this clearly evidenced on Tuesdays when SFGate updates the foreclosed home database; they are now coming fast and furious. For the record, aggregate foreclosures (NODs, NOTS, bank-owned) stand at 1402 in SF. This is up from 1385 in mid July.
A gain of only 17 in a month? That’s probably no different than any other mid-July to mid-August in the past ten years. Are you sure that’s correct?
Not by choice but I had to close on a Friday afternoon.
What was the specific timing if you don’t mind? Because SF does not record on Friday afternoons and that is a fact.
Ok I pulled the info up – and it did close Friday, but your right it notes 8:00 so technically it was not in the afternoon.
Not sure how this mixes with the 5 Friday
deal being discussed if at all. I do agree
that most do not want to close on a Friday and carry the interest, I didn’t. Wells missed the first closing as they did not order the appraisal on time.
Secondly, there’s this. Often the new buyer doesn’t want a Friday close. There are no Friday afternoon closings in SF, and new borrowers would rather not carry the extra two days of interest
I also find that interesting because I always try to close on Fridays.
I like Fridays because I can take that day off, close and then move over the weekend.
I’d rather do that than close on Monday or something then have to take extra days off of work to move, or to move after a long day’s work!
I have no idea if there is any Friday trend, just speaking about why I love to close on Fridays.
Closings tend to bunch up on the last day of the month, for cash management purposes.
We generally shoot to close on the last Thursday of the month, it possible. In case anyone bungles wiring instructions, or we discover an error in loan docs at the closing that require revision, we can still get on record before the calendar page turns.
Greetings! Been away for a while and am just catching up – but I had to weigh in the day of the week debate. Here are the days of the week of the listing event and the selling date for the 4,476 sales of condos and SFH’s (in SF) for the period 7/1/2008 through today per the MLS.
Day Listed
Mon 409 (9.1%)
Tue 460 (10.3%)
Wed 847 (18.9%)
Thu 1,467 (32.8%)
Fri 1,103 (24.6%)
Sat 90 (2.0%)
Sun 100 (2.2%)
Day Sold
Mon 344 (7.7%)
Tue 896 (20.0%)
Wed 864 (19.3%)
Thu 868 (19.4%)
Fri 1,462 (32.7%)
Sat 26 (.6%)
Sun 16 (.4%)
As I noted some time ago, Friday represents the busiest sale day by far accounting for 1/3 of all sales in the period. Sorry to contradict annon on the listing day too – but Thursday is actually the busiest listing day.
“Today I might be mad, Tomorrow I’ll be glad, ‘Cos I’ll have Friday on my mind”
For closings, you are assuming real-time here, FSBO. I’d venture that the city would show completely different actual date recording numbers. This is down to agents wanting to wrap up business before the weekend, I’d guess. Facts are facts as far as Friday recordings are concerned.
But the listings is surprising. I put the Thursday lead down to this. Getting ’em in there on Thursday evening definitely beats the Friday noon deadline. And they’ll still appear “new” for most of Friday. Because I think all of us know that Friday shows the most “new” listings.
“This is down to agents wanting to wrap up business before the weekend, I’d guess.”
Wrong. Per MLS rules agents have a couple of days after close of escrow to update listing status and details – Sold Date isn’t the date the listing is updated but the date it closed.
Wanting to wrap up business before the weekend would not have any impact on the Sold Date.
I agree with ExAgent. My analysis above was based on the “Selling Date” (or Sold Date) in the MLS. This should be the date of sale that eventually ends up on assessor-recorder records. I haven’t done a comprehensive comparison – but I’ve found that the MLS sale date matches the official recorded date with a high degree of accuracy (but less than 100%). So Friday must be the big day – but it’s curious that perceptions are to the contrary.
Wrong. Per MLS rules agents have a couple of days after close of escrow to
Yes, a couple days. That’s quite a lot of leeway. A Wednesday recording gets entered Friday. A Thursday recording gets entered Friday, etc. This isn’t worth arguing about. I deal with this stuff all the time. Think what you will.
You also have to submit a letter to the SFAR, in writing, that both the Buyer and Seller want to keep the sales price “confidential” and don’t want the price shown on the the MLS.
“A Wednesday recording gets entered Friday. A Thursday recording gets entered Friday, etc.”
A Wednesday recording that gets ENTERED by an agent on a Friday shows up in the MLS with a Wednesday Sold Date.
As an agent you either don’t understand it or have being doing it wrong the whole time. You should ask your broker or someone at SFAR to explain it to you!
A Wednesday recording that gets ENTERED by an agent on a Friday shows up in the MLS with a Wednesday Sold Date.
Yeah well that isn’t the way the database works. Status updates default to the same day they are changed.
As for me, I always update any status changes the day they occur.
Who are you really? You’re clearly no ex agent.
anonn: “Closings tend to happen on Fridays? No, they don’t.” “This isn’t worth arguing about. I deal with this stuff all the time. Think what you will.”
And yet the actual numbers, which anonn had access to all the time, reveal that 32.7% of sales are recorded as a Friday sale. Thanks FSBO! anonn is channeling Groucho Marx: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
But they don’t Joe. I explained what actually occurs, and that it is down to a city recorder policy which you and anyone else are welcome to follow up on. You never have anything to say other than bashing me.