The sales volume of listed single-family homes in San Francisco increased 20% on a year-over-year basis in January, up 24 sales from 121 in 2010 to 145 in 2011.
At the same time, the median sales price for single-family homes fell 13 percent, from $705,000 in 2010 to $615,000 in 2011 as January’s increase in sales volume was driven by an increase in relatively low-cost areas, up 31 sales in Districts 10 and 2 combined.
Expect proponents of representing changes in median as changes in value to quickly find religion (at least for a month or two).
With respect to condos, listed sales volume increased 9 percent on a year-over-year basis in January, up 11 sales from 119 in 2010 to 130 in 2011 as the median sales price increased 5 percent from $620,000 to $653,500. The increase in condo sales volume was driven by an 8 unit (63%) increase in District 6 sales.
As total listed sales volume in San Francisco increased by 35 units (15%) in January, listed housing inventory ended the month up 318 units (31%) versus the year before.
∙ Early January Listed Sales Results For San Francisco: Down 34% [SocketSite]
∙ Medians Are Up, But Don’t Confuse That With Increasing “Prices” [SocketSite]
∙ San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory Update: January 31, 2011 [SocketSite]
Sales volume up a bit YOY for both SFRs and condos/TICs, but medians and averages way down (-13% and -7%) for SFRs and up about 5% for condos/TICs. Comparing 1/11 to 1/08, SFR median sale prices are down 32% and averages are down 27%.
If you buy into medians and averages as the market indicator, El Bombero’s assertion was too conservative and prices have dropped more than he stated.
Since we now have January sales, here’s data on months of inventory and trailing 3 months of inventory — columns are month, MLS inventory per SocketSite at closest to mid-month, MLS sales per rereport.com, months of inventory, and trailing 3 months of inventory:
Jul-07 1157 470 2.5 2.3
Aug-07 1187 464 2.6 2.4
Sep-07 1408 346 4.1 3.0
Oct-07 1532 452 3.4 3.3
Nov-07 1393 408 3.4 3.6
Dec-07 1077 355 3.0 3.3
Jan-08 1053 215 4.9 3.8
Feb-08 1159 292 4.0 4.0
Mar-08 1329 318 4.2 4.3
Apr-08 1381 382 3.6 3.9
May-08 1491 478 3.1 3.6
Jun-08 1496 426 3.5 3.4
Jul-08 1470 478 3.1 3.2
Aug-08 1388 393 3.5 3.4
Sep-08 1544 332 4.7 3.8
Oct-08 1789 381 4.7 4.3
Nov-08 1788 241 7.4 5.6
Dec-08 1405 265 5.3 5.8
Jan-09 1189 141 8.4 7.1
Feb-09 1500 192 7.8 7.2
Mar-09 1648 238 6.9 7.7
Apr-09 1622 277 5.9 6.9
May-09 1685 328 5.1 6.0
Jun-09 1630 389 4.2 5.1
Jul-09 1569 452 3.5 4.3
Aug-09 1352 495 2.7 3.5
Sep-09 1448 392 3.7 3.3
Oct-09 1460 435 3.4 3.3
Nov-09 1346 395 3.4 3.5
Dec-09 1131 412 2.7 3.2
Jan-10 909.5 226 4.0 3.4
Feb-10 1116 247 4.5 3.8
Mar-10 1361 414 3.3 3.9
Apr-10 1491 317 4.7 4.2
May-10 1599 480 3.3 3.8
Jun-10 1697 446 3.8 3.9
Jul-10 1799 385 4.7 3.9
Aug-10 1594 360 4.4 4.3
Sep-10 1797 341 5.3 4.8
Oct-10 1936 372 5.2 5.0
Nov-10 1834 326 5.6 5.4
Dec-10 1408 404 3.5 4.8
Jan-11 1255 275 4.6 4.6
Sales are up 22% YOY from the prior January, but months of inventory is higher too.
@A.T.: nice try… As I have stated before, there is just too much noise in one month’s of data to draw any meaningful conclusions. You need to look at least a quarter for trends and at annualized data to factor out seasonality. Peak year to 2010 median pricing off about 15% with another 5% for peak quarter to trough quarter, which gives you the 15%-20% range.
Also, median price typically drops in SF in January as many buyers of more expensive homes check out in mid-November (off to Aspen or Gstadd or wherever they go), which affects closing prices in January. Couple this with the fact that many sellers pull their listings over the holidays. However, banks don’t pull their listings so you end up with a larger % REOs closing in January (yes, mix can affect a single month of data, especially if you can point to a cause that is not random). With REOs up significantly in last two years this could be cause for even further drop in January, but that is just speculation. This annual change in mix is obviously factored out when looking a annualized data and is minimized with quarterly data.
Median prices for REOs is still running at about $300k less on average than non-REOs ($450k versus $750K). Let’s wait to see what full Q1 data tells us when we compare it to Q12010 and Q42010. Tracking quarter over quarter data for SFR and Condos when analyzed separately has been flat (+/-5%) for last seven quarters as I previously posted.
Now some good news. The last week in January had the highest number of accepted offers of any week in the past 6 months. For the full month, January 2011 was up 28% from January of 2010 and up 76% from January 2009 (the market’s nadir). Sorry, I can’t post link to data as SS blocks links to JPG files for some reason.
^Translation: we can’t get any meaningful data from one MONTH because there is too much “noise”, but hey everybody, one WEEK in January was better than any other recent WEEK. Yahooo!!!
And we’re up, in comparison with a month right after the tax rebates ended. We don’t like “noise”, except when we can use it to compare to a month the year after the tax rebates sucked out all of the demand into earlier months, and will therefore shout from the rooftops comparisons to an obviously completely distorted month.
Listen to meeeeee. I will steer you right!”
Apparently, one only hears “noise” where one wants to.
@tipster: you are nothing, but consistent. Fair enough on the one week and one month of deals in contract. However, I don’t think I stated any meaningful conclusions such as “the market is turning around” or “prices are sure to go up”, but only that I thought it was positive news. Everyone can draw their own conclusions (or not). Frankly, I don’t think the data is that meaningful in the big picture, but it is still positive IMO.
I’m not trying to steer anyone to do anything. Only a fool would blindly follow any advice given on SS, mine included.
One could look at these months of inventory and say this is the highest inventory for a January since at least 2007. Spring will tell us if we are actually burning through all this inventory or if the target is moving faster than the arrow.
Just got this in my inbox (back to monthly data):
Months Supply of Inventory (UC calculation) for SFR/Condos was 3.2 months in January 2011. Dec10 3.3, Nov10 3.9, Oct10 4.6, Sep10 4.9, which was the peak in 2010 and Jan10 4.3 months. Data tends to generally correlate to sfrenegades own methodology IMO.
“Except for April 2010 (with its tax credit crush of sales), the MSI in January was the lowest for the last 13 months, and signficantly below the level of January 2010. If we look at just houses, the strongest selling property type, the MSI drops to a very low 2.8 months of inventory. MSI for bank-owned and short sale homes in SF dropped to an even lower 2 months of inventory, signaling a very hot market for these typically lower-end “distress sale” homes.”
^This guy has been doing one and only one thing since he started posting on here: he’s using statistical methods to purposefully mislead people.
“If we just look at houses” he says. Of course, he’s going to use whatever selective statistics he can to give the impression of a rising market when nothing could be further from the truth.
Trust me, this is what some realtors do all day. They sit around and try to identify the one statistic that looks like things are on the upswing to tell their clients to get them to buy now, the goal of every salesperson. Buy now because of this reason or the next.
Because of his complete transparency (I spotted his technique the minute he popped on here) I consider him to be merely annoying (as all of the salespeople whose methods I expose consider me), but my favorite was Katy Diner, who tried to post on Socketsite that the market was increasing last January because the number of days property had been on the market was lower than it had been all year. Of course, the reason it was lower was because realtors had pulled their listings in December to reset the days on market counter.
When I pointed out this little fact, she of course disappeared and never came back.
Banks don’t foreclose over the holidays, so bank owned drops every year at this time of year.
But Skirunman is not going to give up spamming these distorted, selective statistics as long as he can. Meanwhile, prices will continue their descent, after a slight pause while the people who locked in 4.2% interest rates went wild spending that money in a period when most people keep their properties off the market between Christmas and the Super Bowl.
Nonsense as usual. You’re the one who is unusual for always wanting to give condos and SFRs, complete equal footing. Because it suits you. Time and time again you and your cronies will scour Redfin to find a flat or a condo in a dodgy building when someone is talking SFR. Of course skirunman can differentiate. People do that in a housing market. You should too.
Speaking of condos, look at what is happening in Moraga, 30 minutes outside of SF by BART (about the same amount of time as it takes to get from the Marina district in SF to downtown SF).
Sold for 339K in 2006, this went pending at 139.9. I assume you’ll need to spend $30K on a new kitchen, giving the realtor seems to have “missed” the countertops in the photo. But that makes it about 50% off its peak price.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Moraga/2059-Ascot-Dr-94556/unit-108/home/1905092
@tipster: believe whatever you want, but this statement seems a bit far fetched and it really brings down whatever credibility you do have, and you do have some at some times: “30 minutes outside of SF by BART (about the same amount of time as it takes to get from the Marina district in SF to downtown SF)”. It does not take 30 minutes to get from the Marina to anywhere in downtown SF IMO, even during the worst rush hour traffic, at least by car. 15 min MAX. I did that commute for many years and continue to do make that drive at least weekly at many times of the day.
If you reduced the hyperbole by an order of magnitude and didn’t always try to dismiss data that is presented by others by attempting to attack their motivations or person you would be taken more seriously here by others that don’t always share your “sky is falling” rants and raves.
In addition you can’t really compare the door-to-door Marina commute to a commute that begins and ends at BART stations. Unless you live a the BART station you also need to account for the time to get to the BART station as well as get from a Market St. BART station to your office.
Not that a slower journey on transit is bad. You can catch up on work, read, or snooze on BART: stuff you can’t do while driving a car.
@tipster: These thingies “” are called quotation marks. As you can see they are around the statements where I was quoting from the email I referenced, i.e. they are not my words or conclusions.
Also, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. It seems that almost all the data you present here on SS is hand cherry picked apples that you select specifically to try to make your point. This is data selection bias in its most apparent form. I’ll stick to the mathematically accepted measures to estimate values of a diverse data set such as medians and means as well as indices such as Cash-Shiller. While not perfect, they are the best of what we have.
Finally, you seem to think I’m a RE Bull when I have stated numerous times that I am neutral on the SF RE market with regards to valuations for the next year. If accepted measures (not cherry picked apples) show pricing trending down this year I will be the first to acknowledge it, mark my words.
Chestnut/Divis to near the Embarcadero BART station is 25 minutes on the 30X bus. I don’t regularly take that bus, but I have done it a few times and that’s about the last stop you can get a seat. Add some waiting and walking time and a minute or two for traffic and I’d say you’re pretty close to 30 mins. I’ve done it a few times in the other direction (ex significant other lived near there) and it usually took about 35 minutes to get to chestnut and Scott due to traffic.
Bart from the Embarcardero to the nearest station is 25 mins. Add 10 mins driving time to get home.
Not that much difference if you ask me. Agreed on the driving MOD. But the price difference may make the 10 minutes by car worth it.
How can you even compare Moraga and the Marina? Chances are, if you’re looking to live in either one, you wouldn’t even consider the other.
I have a preference though would consider either if the price were right. Actually there are a lot of places I’d consider for the right price.
FYI Moraga does not even have a BART station. It is not on even on a BART line.
And now back to San Francisco and the numbers at hand…
Speaking of what may or may not cause banks for foreclose and when (and hence affecting the inventory of homes for sale or at least the number in the ‘shadow inventory’ category), The Los Angeles Times ran an article today about a new program designed by Cal HFA entitled Keep Your Home California, which will attempt to stanch the downward pressure on prices caused by foreclosures pouring into the market.
From the second ‘graph:
Unlike other similar efforts at the federal level, this is specifically aimed at people who are underwater and at risk of strategically defaulting on their mortgages. The industry people commenting for the article are surprisingly candid:
Emphasis added. Luckily, this program is aimed at people in the lower-end of the market, so although Supervisor Malia Cohen could have been helped by it if she was still paying her mortgage and occupying her former condo, fat cats walking away from million-dollar mortgages, flippers and speculators won’t be considered.
I’d just like to point out that from what I’ve read even if this program helps people stay in their houses they will not really be better off, as they will still be in a house that is massively underwater. History shows the people who have received loan modifications soon re-enter default.
My prediction is that of the 95,000 foreclosures this is supposed to prevent less than half will actually qualify, and that soon after the money runs out the people who did will return to default.
Even if all 95,000 are prevented, that’s only a drop in the bucket, 1.5 months worth of foreclosures according to RealtyTrac:
“California’s foreclosure activity increased 32 percent where one in every 200 housing units received a foreclosure filing.
California accounted for more than 25 percent of the national total with 67,072”
In the mean time we will have transferred another $2 billion dollars from tax payers to banks, with nothing of substance to show for it in the end.
This does not solve the problem, it merely kicks the can down the road. The only way this is going to get worked out is to let the foreclosures happen, let the banks fail, stop slapping on band-aids. There will be no real recovery until we do this, and the longer we wait, the worse the fall will be, and the less people will be left in the middle class when it’s all over.
43 million on food stamps and climbing… that’s nearly 15% of the entire U.S. population!!!
hmmm…January up?
“January up?”
Yes, indeed. As prices fall, sales tend to increase. Simple supply and demand.
Notably, listings are up quite a bit more than sales, continuing the downward price pressure (supply and demand again), which should lead to more sales. At some point prices will have finally fallen enough where supply and demand are in equilibrium and prices stop declining – not even close to there yet.
Redfin January numbers are out and they almost confirm exactly what you said A.T. Price per square foot falling at a rate of about 10% per year now (0.9% per month) – last year the decline from December to January was about 1/10 of that. Sales are up from last year, but listings up a bit more than sales. Sales declined from December by a lot: 32%, putting pressure on sellers to throw in the towel and give in to the extreme lowball offers that were made.
23 sales last week, but 126 new listings, 5X more new homes flooding the market than sales isn’t going to make it any easier for sellers.
http://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco
Redfin’s stats on the asking price is revealing. It really shot up starting in January. It could be new listings who are trying a price strategy, or simply re-listings that come back at the elevated asking from December.
It’s interesting to see that the $/sf asking price collapsed when many listings were yanked. Probably the last left in the MLS were a few desperate sellers who kept their listings up during the holidays, like the “appointment only” listing 2 blocks from me that is lowering by 20K every 3 weeks.
You guys are ridiculous with your opportunistic median embraces. D10’s significant volume + lower pricing is still playing a significant role. The differences in the rest of the city YoY fall into what you would term “noise” if the shoe was on the other foot. In fact, if individual districts are parsed I am confident you’d “see” positivity here and there. Regardless, it’s pretty much four years in and D10 is still behaving differently. Like I said four years ago.
A.T. wrote:
And for the minority report we turn to San Francisco Chronicle Business writer Carolyn Said, published on Wednesday, Home prices to hit bottom this year, report says:
We all like to knock Zillow.com because of their absurd “Zestimates”, but this is a pretty concrete prediction that’ll be interesting to watch either way. As in, how are they going to walk this back in the Fall when it becomes obvious they were wrong?
Chestnut/Divis to near the Embarcadero BART station is 25 minutes on the 30X bus. I don’t regularly take that bus, but I have done it a few times and that’s about the last stop you can get a seat. Add some waiting and walking time and a minute or two for traffic and I’d say you’re pretty close to 30 mins. I’ve done it a few times in the other direction (ex significant other lived near there) and it usually took about 35 minutes to get to chestnut and Scott due to traffic.
No way does it take 25mins to get to FiDi from Marina on 30x. Much more like 15. And I used to get a seat from Mallorca/Chestnut most of the time, but i agree depends on what timeyou’re catching it.(i was always on later side 😉
And I used to walk to/from work routinely (forget exactly but maybe 40mins?). Stunningly beautiful walk.
Also if it’s only 10 minutes to drive to BART,park etc then you’re living pretty close to the Station i think. It’s longer than this for the average East Bayer in my opinion.
Remember as well that you have to double the difference for getting to/from work – so if it’s an extra 20-30mins each way thats 40-60mins each day. Quite a chunka time, probably equivalent to half – 2/3rds of an extra work day each week.
REPA, I used 511.org from chestnut and divis to embarcadero station. The bus time alone to the nearest stop (bush and battery) is 25 minutes leaving at 8:15am (puts you in at 8:45). add a few minutes for waiting for the bus, walking, etc. The traffic home going through the tunnel can add an extra 10 minutes at rush hour.
I’m pretty sure they use the bus schedules at 511.org. Maybe you can call them and tell them you think the buses run faster than the scheduled time?
Agree that D10 is still out ahead. 40-50% declines are common there. Compare with -25-30% elsewhere. 18 months ago, D10 was at neg. 25-30%. You can see the trend.
Fair enough – my 15mins may have been pushing my memory but I guess it depends from where in The Marina (my old 30x route came out at 19mins on 511.org so not so far off!).
And who works at Embarcadero station..? much more likely there would be a 5 or so minute walk from there to the office in the FiDi, which the bus may well put you a bit closer too.
For example, my office is about 10 minutes walk from nearest Bart (Montgomery) but much less than this from the 30x stop as I recall.
I think you’re making the classic commuter assumption that the person lives at BART Station, EastBay and works at Embarcadero BART (in much the same way, when I lived in Brighton,UK,I had so many London commuters tell me it took them an hour to get to work. Impossible, unless they lived at Brighton Station and worked at Victoria Station..)
Either way, splittig hairs of course, but I do find an assertion that it takes no longer to get to work in SF from Moraga than the Marina fairly incredulous!
Well the underlying arguments are that suburbs and bad neighborhoods will decimate values in good parts of town. It’s been four years now. You think they’ll give it up easily? No chance. So why let a little fact twisting get in the way.
Used Campolindo High School to dummy up a location. Feel free to pony up another. I got 0:55 or 1:18 from Moraga to Embarcadero BART.
I see there’s an address. I got 1:05 to 1:20 from 2059 Ascot Dr. to Embarcadero, door-to-door.
I see there’s an address. I got 1:05 to 1:20 from 2059 Ascot Dr. to Embarcadero, door-to-door.
I see there’s an address. I got 1:05 to 1:20 from 2059 Ascot Dr. to Embarcadero, door-to-door.
No one is going to wait a half hour to take the bus in the burbs to avoid a whopping 11 minute drive.
Try driving directions from google maps from the Orinda Bart station to the address. You should get 11 minutes.
So you’re saying it’s a 32 min. BART ride, an 11 min. drive, say 7 min. walk & wait, total trip about 0:50? Sounds about right, as opposed to “30 minutes outside of SF by BART”.
25 min bart ride, 11 min drive. It’s taken me more than 36 minutes to get from Embarcadero Bart station to Chestnut and Scott on the 30X.
Yes, people should time it and draw their own conclusions about the trade offs they would be willing to make. It saves a lot of money.
For the price of an SF condo, you can get a house with a yard and a pool on 2/3 of an acre in a superb school district. This one is the same 25 minutes back on bart, plus 13 minutes in your car.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Moraga/301-Fernwood-Dr-94556/home/1011667
I worked in Moraga for the last 6 years and live in SF. I live where I do for a reason, the same reason that there is such a large price differential between the two cities. Has anyone here even been to Moraga recently?
And how long does it take to walk from your car in the BART parking lot to the train platform? And how many minutes do you need to arrive early? Presumably you don’t plan to arrive the exact moment the train arrives.
You still haven’t added in the walk from the BART station to the office.
It is funny how East Bay commuters often low ball their commute, I don’t know why they do it, but they often do. Remember how one regular poster still insists that her “door to door” commute from Piedmont to the financial district is 20 minutes each way at rush hour? And how about the guy who claimed the same thing from the Berkeley Hills?
There are lots of good reasons to live in the suburbs but wildly inflated claims about how much time it saves on ones commute is not one of them.
And how long does it take to walk from your car in the BART parking lot to the train platform? And how many minutes do you need to arrive early? Presumably you don’t plan to arrive the exact moment the train arrives.
You still haven’t added in the walk from the BART station to the office.
Must be nice to have the bus drive right into your house and then take you right into your office, but for the rest of us, those same issues apply to the bus. You have to walk to the stop, wait for the bus in the rain or cold, sometimes the bus doesn’t show/is full, etc. When it does, some smelly homeless guy who walked on and dropped 8 cents in the fare box is sitting in it smelling it up because he feels like it.
It is certainly a longer commute but it is much cheaper to live there and there are advantages to match the disadvantages. You claim I am ignoring the extra time (I’m not, it’s just that there is extra time no matter what mode of transportation you take), but you are ignoring the compromises YOU make to live in the city.
Look at that 4 bedroom home for $850K. 2 car garage. No noise from your neighbors. A pool. School districts that actually provide an education amid parents who care enough for their kids that they are willing to take an extra 5-10 minutes to see that they get a good education. Clean sidewalks. Low crime. Police who actually respond.
Somebody with alcohol addiction issues shows up there, they bus them here and take the $10,000 per year they would have to spend on him and use it for schools and parks. We roll out the red carpet for them, chauffeur them to the hospital, every day if they want, put them up in a hospital bed and pay to house them. That costs money and that money is used in other cities for other things. It does make a difference So instead of having parks, we add a “parklet” to parking spaces on busy streets with noise an fumes and the people here are so used to not having anything that they actually think that’s great. Those of you who scoff at the burbs, you wanna know how “sophisticated” that seems to the rest of the country.
You’ve been so used to living in filth and noise and sending your kids to private schools or just letting them deal that you’ve completely forgotten what it’s like not to live like that.
There are certainly pluses and minuses to each. But my point is that prices continue to fall in the east bay so much that an extra 5-10 minutes of commute time starts to make sense for a lot of people.
People will laughably turn up their nose at suburbanites, but they can get into the city for a play or a restaurant at nights or on the weekends with little trouble and their kids don’t have to put up with a ridiculous school district and non stop noise from neighbors two inches away. My employees think I’m nuts for living in SF (“It’s dirty – why would you want to live there) and I had one twentysomething who lived here for a year and then moved back to the burbs.
I’m not knocking SF, just pointing out that there are trade offs and as prices fall in the burbs, it’s another reason for people to trade out. As it gets cheaper and cheaper out there, and it will, people just decide they don’t need to live in squalor amid substance abusers and the crime they bring with them, two inches away from their neighbors, just because twice a year they see a play and it saves them ten minutes coming home.
“It is funny how East Bay commuters often low ball their commute, I don’t know why they do it, but they often do.”
Believe me NVJ, as I stated above in my experience, this is far from just an Easy Bay thing, more like a worldwise phenomenom. The only thing I haven’t fully decided is whether they are trying to fool a) other people b) themselve or c) both when clearly understating the commute times…
Right now my commute from Noe is a) an nice walk to BART/24th,(doubling as some good exercise!) b) 10minute BART time (including waiting time) and c) aprox 8minute walk from Montgomery to the office.
I should move to the East Bay where that will magically become a 26 minute commute only (the BART trip),saving myself 10mins or so each way!!!
“”People will laughably turn up their nose at suburbanites, but they can get into the city for a play or a restaurant at nights or on the weekends with little trouble and their kids don’t have to put up with a ridiculous school district and non stop noise from neighbors two inches away. My employees think I’m nuts for living in SF (“It’s dirty – why would you want to live there)” ”
It sounds like it’s the surbanites who are the ones laughably turning their noses up at those who live in SF in your experience Tipster! Those comments sound like real snobbery to me! Would probably drivemu nuts to have to put up with comments like that on a regular basis!
Gotta agree with NVJ and REpornaddict here, tipster – I think you’re stretching on this one.
I have a lot of friends who live in Marin or Lamorinda, and the door-to-door commute is easily an hour, regardless of what some website estimates. Google maps will tell you it takes under 40 minutes to get from Santa Monica to Long Beach on the 405. Ever made that drive? The only way you get there in under 40 minutes is with a helicopter.
And suburbanites getting into the city on weekends “with little trouble”? C’mon. The bay bridge clog on weekends can take 30 minutes to get through by itself, and then you need to spend another half hour finding a place to park the giant SUV.
Besides, you assume everyone has kids. Many people in the city don’t, which means they have zero incentive to move to the burbs, regardless of the price delta.