As we outlined yesterday, the number of homes on the market in San Francisco has ticked up to a 10-year seasonal high, driven by a slowdown in the pace of sales and new contracts having been signed, which shouldn’t have caught any plugged-in readers by surprise.
In fact, the number of single-family homes and condos in contract across San Francisco has been down an average of 18 percent on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter to date, including a relatively slow start to the spring season with pending sales down over 10 percent on a year-over-year basis last week, which will have a direct impact on March and April sales figures and projected inventory levels over the next couple of weeks if not months.
It’s almost as if the dew is off the lily. My God how this last boom battered SF. Ron Conway’s puppeteering of Mayor Lee to goose the economy with unnecessary tax breaks for undeserving companies was the first salvo.
we would be in so much better shape if Lee were still Mayor.
This is so weird. Listings were down in January and February, and now pendings are down in March. I just can’t come up with any connection between those two metrics.
While we realize you’re trying to be snarky, total listings in January and February were actually even, year-over-year. Inventory, which is a function of both listing and sales activity, was down.
Year over year with 2021 isn’t great because it’s clearly the outlier. This year has seen more sales ytd than any of the other years going back to 2015, save 2021.
More accurately, “the spike in sales [last year] was effectively an artifact of the market being shutdown or restricted [in 2020], which pushed activity that would have occurred in 2020 into 2021, as evidenced by listing activity, inventory levels and sale trends,” as we outlined at the time and despite a plethora of industry misreads and misreports to the contrary.
Not more accurately, no. That’s a reading of human behavioral patterns in a black swan even. And if you wish to parse in that manner perhaps you might have qualified the year over year aspect initially.
Going out on a limb here, but my prediction is that with more listings (or “inventory” – whatever word you want to use) now coming on line, closed sales will also increase in the coming months. That’s what happens when demand remains strong, which is what we have in SF. If that does not happen, and we just see listings (or “inventory”) continue to increase while sales remain low, then we will be able to conclude the market is turning into a buyers’ market. I doubt that is what we’ll see, but I certainly will be quick to admit that simple fact if that does occur.
Closed sales should definitely increase in the absolute over the coming months with basic seasonality in play. But based on the current trend, year-over-year sales will be down, as will be the case in March despite as many homes being listed for sale in January and February as there were last year.
At the same time, inventory levels are currently trending up with new listings outpacing sales, at least currently.
UPDATE: Pace of Home Sales in San Francisco Slips
Pace of Home Sales in San Francisco Continues to Drop and down over 18 percent at the end of May with inventory having continued to climb to an 11-year seasonal high.