While the net number of homes on the market in San Francisco (i.e., inventory/supply) has been up an average of 24 percent on a year-over-year basis over the past three months, the number of homes in contract to be sold (i.e., demand) has been down an average of 40 percent and is currently 44 percent lower than at the same time last year.

In fact, pending home sales activity in San Francisco remains at its lowest level in over six years on a seasonally adjusted basis, with the average price per square foot of the homes which remain on the market having dropped to $940 per square foot, which is 5 percent lower than at the same time last year and lower than in 2020, 2019 and 2018 as well, as we noted yesterday.

30 thoughts on “Pending Home Sales in S.F. Down Over 40 Percent YOY”
  1. I don’t anticipate that the hundreds, possibly thousands (tomorrow will tweettell) of pixels jockeys shown the door in the Bay Area this week will be buying many homes locally (for shelter and/or “investment”😉) in the near future, so it is not unreasonable to assume this YOY trend will only accelerate through the coming months.

    To those real estate sector workers who may be anxious about the prospects for continued employment in that field, I tender (not without some irony) the advice smugly dispensed to laid-off factory workers in the US over the last three decades: learn to code.

      1. No, only the ones who received a commission on the transaction of a building from which a working class family or artist had been evicted, or from which a small business had to leave when the new lease was adjusted to extract top dollar from VC-funded pizza delivery app hoped-for unicorns (that would never earn an actual dime) But you probably knew I was going to say that..

        1. But you probably knew I was going to say that..
          Pretty much.
          Speaking of…you: since you made the mistake of putting an amount (“two”) and a timeframe (endless and often) together in the same breath, in this time of high inflation will we be seeing less frequent posts or will you morph into “three beers” soon?

          1. It’s a thankless task, to be sure, but future generations will no doubt be grateful that someone is monitoring any syntactic lapses and inconsistencies on my part in these boards.

          2. I try to stay on the good side of posterity, after all, it’s going to have the final word.

      1. Again with the reductio ad absurdum. How smart was it to sacrifice the other sectors that make for a resilient economy and instead put nearly all our economic eggs in one front-end stack basket? Yes, it helped boost your commissions in the short term, but as we’re seeing now with continuing supply chain issues – warehousing, transportation, energy, labor, raw materials, finished goods – it was an own goal in the long term.

          1. By your handle and rah-rah disposition wrt real estate, I inferred you were a sales agent for used buildings. I apologize for the slanderous association if this is incorrect.

            Speaking of apologies, perhaps you might see this thread as an opportunity for amends for this disparagement below?

            “So the answer to my question “Do you have any actual statistical support for your 30% number?” is “No, I do not.”

          2. I have zero association with the real estate market, never have.

            I have no idea what you want meet apologize for. If memory serves, you said made an inaccurate statement.

          3. Then my apologies per above.

            As for your pending apologies, please revisit this amusing thread. Data from an obscure, notoriously anti-real estate real estate data source show that what I claimed to be a 30% non-organic market component – which remark you scoffed at – was an understatement.

            And even more of an understatement when the study parameters were subjected to a logical market critique. How quickly we forget!

          4. From the same thread, what you actually said was “Without that ~30% speculator, flipper, foreign capital flight, money laundering, Air BnB, and pieds a terre cohort”.

            This cohort was not described in the document you cited.

          5. Exactly. The non-organic cohort I described encompasses and therefore is logically at least as large, almost certainly larger, and possibly even much larger than the non-organic cohort as per the data. Fans of grade school set theory would understand this basic logic.

          6. Nope. There’s no mention of the “speculator, flipper, foreign capital flight, money laundering, Air BnB, and pieds a terre cohort”. Or maybe I’m missing it. Where, for instance, does the paper describe money laundering? Airbnbs? And so forth?

            By the way, I like how you have quietly dropped the reference to the first paper you cited. Well done!

          7. Fans of English comprehension everywhere understand that organic real estate demand consists of owner-occupiers, and that all the rest – speculators, flippers, large investors, small investors, short-term rentals, vacation homes, foreign capital flight, money launderers, et al – are non-organic demand.

            In proper rhetoric, doubling- or even tripling-down on bizarre strawman nitpicking isn’t considered an honest rebuttal. Paging Upton Sinclair…

          8. More like you don’t know what you’re talking about so of course your language is not fitting. Investors don’t count, you write. In a town full of small buildings. And ….. money launderers, now? Heh. Quit already. You’ve been found out.

          9. I’m sorry, but the word salad you proffer needs more dressing.

            34.6% non-organic demand, at a minimum, using restrictive parameters.

            Astonishing!

          10. So are you lumping every single house which is not owned by the party which lives there are nonorganic? That’s an interesting theory.

            So then let’s start with two questions: what’s the difference between a large company owning and renting a bunch of houses, and a large company owning and renting a bunch of apartments in the same building?

            Under your definition, would apartment buildings also count as nonorganic?

          11. The title of the corelogic study you refuse to acknowledge that shows 34.6% non-organic demand in SF/Oakland is “Single-Family Investor Activity Remained High in the Third Quarter.” Is that clear enough, or do you need further elaboration? One wonders what further nitpicking distraction you will throw at the wall in order to defer an admission of error?

    1. Super classy to be cheering the loss of jobs by a lot of people. And quite ironic to be doing so while ranting about “pixels jockeys” on an internet platform they have created. I’m betting that any laid off “pixels jockeys” find new jobs before all the laid off HR and marketing folks, secretaries, and other non-tech staff members. But let’s cheer on the misfortune of all these working people because, you know, VCs and all that.

      1. I love a tu quoque in the morning!

        It’s a zero sum game. The policies that created those overpaid coder jobs in SF for redundant phone gimmicks that helped boost your commissions also led to historic levels of eviction and income inequality. Our young genius stylesheet “engineers” will have no problem finding work at profitable and productive software firms that either offer WFH or are located in cities where rents and leases are much lower than in SF.

        You(pl.) lived very well off a historic bubble that crushed those lower on the economic ladder. I don’t recall any empathy then, just “learn to code.” You(sing.) clearly don’t make the connection between how the policies that benefited you helped eviscerate the American working class and led to the rise of demagogues. Screw with the working class, pay the consequences. It’s unseemly for you(sing.) to now whine that your Fed-engineered lifestyle that hurt so many others is now coming to an end. Chin up, and take it like the professionals you(pl.) want to be seen as.

    1. Huh? What “policies created those overpaid coder jobs in SF for redundant phone gimmicks?” And what about it is “coming to an end?” The Bay Area tech economy is the envy of the world, for good reason. I grew up in the Midwest and both worked those factory jobs you romanticize (btw, it is a grueling, sh***y way to make a living) and saw the demise of those jobs long before the “Fed-engineering” you seem to despise without identifying what that even is. Hard to tell from your rants, but it sounds like you’re complaining about globalization. Yes, that trend is slowing a bit, which will make most of us poorer. I guess if workers are poorer but the ultra-rich are also getting richer a little less fast, that is . . . good?

      And your thinking that I have anything to do with the real estate industry made me laugh. Although I did buy my home because that has been a lot cheaper than renting. Turned out to be a smart move financially, although we were just looking for a nice house to live in.

      1. My apologies if I don’t repeat the entire argument in every single post. (btw, I just used html tags, vilel hypocrite that I am!).

        If you refuse to understand how the Fed is now ending the monetary policies that created the largest asset bubbles in history, pumping billions of dollars into Bay Area “tech” and real estate sectors, and what the implications and consequences of this new dispensation will be, it’s not my place to help you. Presumably, as someone who posts here, you either work in or are curious about Bay Area real estate. Somehow you are able to post on a board that documents the clear relationship between mortgage rates and real estate prices, yet you seem to think that venting against one irate crank will reverse the ongoing real estate “correction.” All I can say is, good luck sir or madam.

          1. I’m interested in the macro picture of Bay Area real estate as it relates to the quality of life for all people, not just for a privileged class. I’m not much interested in the realtor bingo game so popular here of nitpicking layout details of individual underperforming apples as an excuse for their reduced sale price.

          2. You seem more interested in telling people how things should be, per your worldview. You also seem to go out of your way to judge most people you disagree with as realtors, as if that’s pejorative in and of itself. You’ve clearly not been around long enough to comprehend the good that realtors can get up to, helping families out, tenants out, nonprofits out, etc. It’s all strident bern-bro type strokes, obscuring any big picture you’d wish to convey.

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