San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory: 9/13/10 (www.SocketSite.com)
As plugged-in people have known to expect, inventory of Active listed single-family homes, condos, and TICs in San Francisco spiked 15.1% over the past two weeks, back to within a few listings of a five year high. On average, inventory has increased 19.2% during the same two weeks over the past four years.
Current listed inventory is up 24% on a year-over-year basis, up 18% versus the average of the past four years, and up 24% as compared to an average of 2006 and 2007. At the same time, listed sales in August (362) were down nearly 30% on a year-over-year basis, the slowest August in San Francisco in well over a decade and versus a 13% year-over-year drop in listed sales in July (385).
The inventory of single-family homes for sale in San Francisco is up 29% on a year-over-year basis five (plus) year high of 747. Condo inventory is up 21% to 1,050.
34% of all active listings in San Francisco have undergone at least one price reduction and the percentage of active listings that are either already bank owned (88) or seeking a short sale (167) is 14%, down 6% on an absolute basis over the past two weeks.
The standard SocketSite Listed Inventory footnote: Keep in mind that our listed inventory count does not include listings in any stage of contract (even those which are simply contingent) nor does it include listings for multi-family properties (unless the units are individually listed).
SocketSite’s San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory: 8/30/10 [SocketSite]
A New High For Distressed Listings In San Francisco [SocketSite]

43 thoughts on “San Francisco’s Listed Inventory Spikes As Listed Sales Slide”
  1. Wow, that is a big jump. Does anyone have a breakdown by district? I am not really seeing that many homes in my area, I am kind of curious where the big jump is.

  2. Ive been looking for 5 weeks now in South Beach, and inventory is scarce, and when well priced–creating multiple offer situations I’ve been on the losing end of. So I haven’t seen the spike, either…

  3. Sales stayed relatively strong right into December in 2009. Not happening this year. Look for the YOY comparisons to get uglier.
    The pct of listings that are REOs and short sales is interesting. Any way to compile the pct of sales that fit into these categories? My guess is that’s where the action is concentrated but I really don’t know.

  4. for what it’s worth, my 94118 redfin update had 18 new listings and 6 reductions for thursday, friday, saturday last week. That’s the most I can recall seeing.

  5. It sure seemed like there were lots of open house signs on Sunday in the Castro and Noe Valley. Plenty of inventory here.

  6. the jump in listings may not be obvious when one is just looking around casually due to the way the agents/sellers play the listing game.
    For instance:
    if there were 50 homes for sale in a particular area and then 25 were taken off the market for 2-4 weeks then relisted again you would get a jump of 25 listings in that area, but a casual observer might not notice it because the number of homes for sale hasn’t really changed.
    The casual observer would see 50 —->50 listings, but what really happened was 50—>25—>50.
    my guess is that if we looked we would find that most of these “new” listings are simply recycled old inventory from the summer.
    this bump happens every year and I’m sure nobody was surprised about it. the inventory bump will continue for a few months and then fall in December if history is any guide.

  7. There were three open houses in my hood (Telegraph Hill), which I had seen advertised before, but hadn’t paid much attention to.
    I paid attention this time: the realtors put signs 3 blocks away and made pedestrians practically trip over them.
    The places have been for sale forever (at least two of them), but I’m sure they’re all “3 days on the market”.
    The places will sell, just not at the inflated, unbelievably optimistic bubble prices that they’re asking.
    While it seems that we’re all in agreement that SF RE has deflated, and mostly in agreement that the deflation will continue, why hasn’t the discussion on this and other blogs turned to techniques for convincing sellers to vastly reduce their prices or be “priced out forever”?

  8. I like that! “Sell now or be priced out forever” Lets get some t-shirts and bumper stickers made.
    Once that attitude is embraced, we will find the bottom.

  9. Hmm, it is possible that a bunch of new homes came on the market but just at prices way outside my range. I have an auto agent on CleanOffer that emails me whenever a 3/2 (or larger) SFH home for under $1.2M in either Noe Valley or Eureka Valley goes on the market. It fired a few times when I first set it up, but then was quiet for years. In 2008 and 2009 it started sending me quite a few hits, mostly fixers or homes on busy streets. It has not sent me anything in a while.
    But I looked at the redfin seacrh for everything that has gone on the market over the last 7 days and am surprised to see that there are 10 new homes that went on the market this week. Six of the ten are priced over $2M.
    Only 1626 Dolores is at all interesting to me at this price point, though 265 28th would be ideal if it was 25% less expensive. So I am just sitting on the sidelines like the rest of you in this market.
    Maybe all those homes on the market will lead to a sudden price drop but I kind of doubt it. We are sitting through the paint drying on a painting of grass growing phase that ex SF-er talks about.

  10. Does anyone have a breakdown by district? I am not really seeing that many homes in my area, I am kind of curious where the big jump is.
    The “new” listings (less than 14 days) appear to be scattered throughout the entire city.

  11. “On average, inventory has dropped 19.2% during the same two weeks over the past four years.”
    that doesn’t look right to me?
    [Editor’s Note: That should have read “…increased 19.2%…” and since corrected. Cheers.]

  12. Number of listings less than 14 old by zip:
    ZIP
    94114 50
    94110 44
    94109 40
    94115 34
    94122 27
    94118 26
    94107 25
    94121 25
    94112 24
    94131 24
    94117 24
    94123 24
    94116 17
    94127 16
    94133 14
    94124 11
    94132 11
    94014 10
    94103 10
    94134 9
    94105 9
    94108 7
    94102 5
    94111 4
    94158 3
    9416 1
    94017 1
    96116 1
    There are obviously errors here, as some of the above zip codes don’t exist.

  13. Embarcadero, re your question about why sellers apparently refuse to reduce their prices to the point where they can actually sell, I think there are two drivers.
    First, there is a large group that simply cannot reduce them. They are underwater and they do not have the money to bring a sizable check to the closing. They are stuck. REOs and short sales are the way to clear these (a growing trend in SF and elsewhere).
    Second, there is a group that could drop their prices but they just can’t bear to do so because they had convinced themselves their place was “worth” so much more than the market is telling them. My own mother is in this group. She owns the house in the East Bay where my grandmother lived — who died a little over a year ago — and is selling it. They bought it for her 10 years ago for $400,000 (still owes (270k) and it could probably sell for about that. But she listed it at $550,000 and has now dropped the price twice to $450,000. I’ve told her the (empty) place is costing her about $2000/mo in interest and taxes (plus more in opportunity costs), and if she’d just drop it another $50k or so it would sell and she’d avoid all those expenses for who knows how many months or years. But she just “can’t sell it for so little and the market is sure to pick up.” I suspect there is a lot of that. Reality will eventually set in for mom and others in this group, and that will clear this segment. In the meantime, a lot of inventory sits.

  14. Thanks for that AT. I guess we’ll just have to wait for short sales and foreclosures to help convince people to lower their prices and reduce their expectations. Otherwise, I can imagine tripping over a lot of open house signs every weekend for the next few years.

  15. It’s a slow, boring market. Beginning to remind me a bit of of 94-95′. No s*ex appeal, hype not working (agents hate this and know the party’s over.) Those who must sell, especially if their props aren’t ideal, have to lower prices to succeed. Many others don’t have to sell, just keep relisting/playing mls games which is why inventory is (relatively) higher these days.
    But I’m beginning to see a few good deals in 2-6 units. The good ones are selling to investors who can get loans and have the cash to deal with low rent tenants and renovations. A few good deals have transpired, but otherwise this sure is a
    boring ass market. I think it’ll stay this way for some time and then slowly improve. I don’t think prices will drop dramatically in the next year or two, but there will be deals out there, depending on what you’re looking for. Meantime i’m just collecting my rental income, enjoying life and waiting…

  16. Thanks, Joh…that explains all the signs in the Castro this weekend.
    BTW…I did see some evidence of realtors trying to generate multiple offers by pricing places “low”. I thought that was Susan Ring’s strategy on 21 Beaver..a nice 3BR/2BA SF house for 1.25. She was “accepting offers” today, and expecting several. I know that can be a lot of realtor puffery sometimes, but in this case I believed it. And I think with all the new stuff (OK, new and recycled stuff) coming on the market after a VERY slow summer, that seems like the right strategy to me. Cause I think alot of this stuff is going to sit for months and then what?

  17. “and then what”
    And then the buyers will look at the listing history on Redfin, smell blood and write nothing but lowball offers.

  18. I think the slogan on the t-shirts should be
    “Sell now or live with debt forever”
    or
    “Sell now or live with negative equity forever”

  19. One of the interesting things to me about SF has always been the relative scarcity of properties. This definitely has a lot to do with why the bubble here took off (supply/DEMAND). It’s interesting to note that in all of SF right now there are only 1800 places to choose from and probably less than 100-150 homes for any one person with a more refined select criteria.
    I would like to see a standardized “Inventory Supply” number defined and tracked by SS as it relates to monthly sales dived into the Inventory figure.

  20. There’s not that many properties – but there’s also not that many people. SF has a population of what, 700k or so?

  21. More important, there aren’t that many buyers. Only a few hundred places sell in SF in the strongest months. About half as many now as during the boom.
    I second Eddy’s desire to track inventory supply in some consistent manner. It is clearly up right now, with high listings and low sales, but it’s always nice to have some standard tracking mechanism (like the chart above, which is great).

  22. Like some other commenters on here, I too have been looking for a while but also haven’t seen anything worth jumping on in the neighborhoods I’m interested in – sellers are still pricing properties way above what they bought them for a few years ago.
    It’s frustrating to check the MLS each week and see the same things up there again and again. Also, maybe someone can enlighten me – but why is there no search functionality to eliminate TICs from popping up? I hate having to sort through these…

  23. I’ve shown this number before from inventory and sales at roughly the same time, but an interesting factoid is that August sale rate of 362 and 1797 in inventory is just about 5 months.
    However, August 16 vs. August sales is 1594 vs. 362, which is about 4.4 months inventory. That’s not apples-to-apples from the last July numbers I calculated because I used DQ numbers for the sales + SS numbers for inventory then:
    “SocketSite gave inventory on July 12, 2010 as 1799. With 452 sales in July, we had just shy 4 months of inventory.”
    EBGuy, do you have a new pent-up number?

  24. “I think the slogan on the t-shirts should be
    ‘Sell now or live with debt forever’
    or
    ‘Sell now or live with negative equity forever'”
    Why? Did they recently make changes to the law that prevents people from defaulting? Wouldn’t “Sell nor or default later” or “Sell now or live with negative equity until a foreclosure” be more accurate?

  25. We track inventory every month from the MLS for five specific configurations of single family homes and condos/TICs. Our numbers show a definite increase in inventory for single family homes (2br/1ba; and 3br/2ba) compared to last month of approx. 4% with the biggest increases in district 2 (Sunset), district 4 (Twin Peaks West), district 9 (Central East) and district 10 (Southeast) http://www.sfarmls.com/docs/areamaps.htm
    However, there was a reduction in inventory for condos/TICs with the biggest reductions in district 1 (Richmond), district 5 (Central) and district 9 (Central East). Overall, for the three condo categories we track (1/1, 2/1 and 2/2), inventory was down about 3% compared to the previous month.
    Compared to the same month last year, inventory of single family homes (same configurations) was essentially flat and inventory of condo/TICs (same configurations) was up about 8%.
    Numbers come from the MLS at the end of the first week each month. The configurations we track represent about 45% of the single family home market and about 63% of the condo market in San Francisco.

  26. Oh…thanks lyqwyd that’s really helpful. I always select single-family homes *and* condos/TIC/etc. But if I just select the one category – condo/TIC button, I can then choose what to include. Now I see the error of my ways!

  27. Did they recently make changes to the law that prevents people from defaulting?
    No, but “Don’t 1099 Me, Bro” (aka Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act extended by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act) expires at the end of 2012. How about “Sell now or jingle mail in 2012”.

  28. BTW..the property I referenced above, 21 Beaver, which showed for the first time this past week, is already listed as “pending”. So I guess Susan Ring’s pricing strategy did get action. Again, it’s a “done” 3BR/2BA SF house in the Castro listed for $1.25. Will be curious to see what it goes for.
    It was an intelligently rebuilt place (late 80’s). Didn’t feel that dated, and actually a bit refreshing to not have the usual 2010 design cliches.

  29. At least as, or more, telling than all the new listings and the low sales volume are the big numbers of reductions. I see 387 in the last month and 159 in the last week. In the last week we’ve had three times as many reductions as sales (per redfin).

  30. It looks like pent up supply is holding steady. Currently, 1412 homes are in some state of foreclosure (NODs, NOTS, bank owned) in Ess Eff. This is compared to 1411 homes two weeks ago. Standard disclosures about noise in the data; information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

  31. For the sake of continuity:
    8/2: 1437/1653 = 0.87 pent-up per listed inventory
    8/16: 1397/1594 = 0.88 pent-up per listed inventory
    8/30: 1411/1561 = 0.90 pent-up per listed inventory
    9/13: 1412/1797 = 0.79 pent-up per listed inventory
    Doesn’t seem like it’s worth doing this pent-up/inventory stat any longer as inventory seems more volatile than pent-up, which makes sense intuitively, although maybe I’ll revisit it a year from now in case that’s helpful.
    Let’s look at actual foreclosures in SF County, based on trustee deeds being recorded as reported by DataQuick:
    2010Q2: 180 (about 60/mo)
    2010Q1: 193 (about 64/mo)
    2009Q2: 136 (about 45/mo)
    2009Q1: 101 (about 34/mo)
    That would suggest that currently less than 5% of EBGuy’s pent-up supply number is being foreclosed on monthly.
    DQ also lists NODs:
    2010Q2: 431 (about 144/mo)
    2010Q1: 536 (about 179/mo)
    2009Q2: 589 (about 196/mo)
    2009Q1: 569 (about 190/mo)
    It looks like foreclosures per NOD have gone up from 2009. Foreclosures should trail NODs by at least 90 days in California, so a quick eyeball suggests a ratio of 1/3 when you compare ’10Q2 foreclosures to ’10Q1 NODs vs. 1/4.2 for ’09Q2 foreclosures to ’09Q1 NODs. Of course, not all NODs that eventually lead to foreclosures are foreclosed within 90 days, but it looks like the pace is up this year. That makes sense, since we haven’t been as affected by moratoria.
    EBGuy, how does any of this fit with your numbers?

  32. Wow. If the big stalemate we see today goes on for a longer while, this will get really interesting. Buyers can wait longer than some sellers. Bubbletopper sellers in particular could be vulnerable to the game of chicken currently going on.
    I am following 4 deals since late spring. 2 of these are people in a tight corner: high monthly expenses, no way to balance it off with rent, moved out and bleeding red ink month after month, asking exactly at covering mortgage + commission and no serious interest whatsoever. They’re not in the distressed bucket but they’re out there. It seems like the market is not rushing to rescue them after all… I give them one year to play out to an outcome, probably negative.
    To be honest, I still see deals going from under my nose. Right priced still sells.

  33. There is a foreclosure at the Brannan that has gone pending after having been listed for around its 2002 price for 6 weeks. Needs about 40K worth of work, but i’d bet the buyer probably got that much off list.
    There’s starting to be enough top quality foreclosures, you can really just ignore the bubble top sellers.

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