June 30, 2009
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). For the full source data behind this post, plus seasonally adjusted and tiered price data, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website.
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. - April data is released in June).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the San Francisco Bay Area* as of April:
April 2009
Month to Month: Up 0.6%
Year to Year: Down 28.0%
Change from Peak: Down 45.8% in 35 months
The following chart shows the Bay Area HPI scaled such that the May 2006 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Bay Area HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (June 2000).
April’s slight uptick in San Francisco’s HPI marks the first increase of any kind since early 2007.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare the Bay Area’s performance to other areas across the country:
To recap, we have seen the following interventions in recent months meant to boost the housing market:
- $8k first-time buyer tax credit
- 4.5% - 5% mortgage rates
- various moratoriums on foreclosures
- numerous federal programs encouraging loan workouts
The apparent result of this host of actions has been a flattening to very slight upticks seen in the chart above, in a month that is historically one of the strongest of the year for the real estate market. I guess you can color me underwhelmed.
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Does April’s uptick mark the end of price drops in San Francisco? Personally I doubt it, but we’ll probably have to wait until the fall before we really know for sure.
*[Case-Shiller defines the San Francisco Bay Area as the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo.]
June 29, 2009
Let’s take our monthly look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.
The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.
For those that are interested, I have uploaded the full data set in Excel format here. The downloadable Excel file also includes charts showing the top ten cities/towns/neighborhoods with the least reduced-price listings.
First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:
Of the 128 cities/towns we ranked in the Bay Area this month, 23 had price-reduced ratios of fifty percent or more.
Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Bay Area neighborhoods for price reductions:
Of the 99 neighborhoods we ranked in the Bay Area this month, 13 had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. Unlike many of the other markets that Redfin serves around the country, there does not appear to be much of a correlation in the Bay Area between the median price of a neighborhood and the number of price reductions.
The general trend in the Bay Area looks to be heading slightly toward less price reductions, however every city and neighborhood is of course different. Some may be getting softer while others get tighter. Download the full spreadsheet to check where your neighborhood came in.
June 16, 2009
Let’s check in on our stats once again and find out where buyers are currently getting the biggest discounts off asking price. If you are a potential buyer, this will help you to know which neighborhoods may be softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.
In the charts below, we have taken all sales data from last month in the Bay Area and sorted it by city/town. We calculated the overall difference between the sale price and the list price. Note that this reflects the final list price, after all price drops in the listing. Any areas with fewer than ten sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings, but interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).
Here are the top ten areas with the largest overall discount:
The overall discount dropped quite a bit in June from our previous update in April, falling to 2.7% from 5.0%.
Here are the ten areas with the smallest discounts:
Of the 49 areas we ranked, just those four came in with average sale prices above the list price.
Here’s an added bonus. The following chart shows the top ten areas with the largest overall discount from the original list price, instead of the final list price:
Walnut Creek remains in the #1 spot, but the discount nearly doubles. Meanwhile, the area-wide discount rate nearly tripled.
Is the area you’re shopping not on either the top 10 or bottom 10? No problem, just download the full rankings in Excel format and hit the “FullSummary” sheet.
Of the 3,089 sales we tracked in the 1-month period, 294 homes (10%) sold for 10% or more off the asking price, while 524 homes sold for 5% or more above the asking price.
June 8, 2009
Check out this loft in SOMA close to everything tomorrow, Tuesday June 9 from 2 - 4 p.m.
Open House Dates and Times
Tuesday June 9 from 2 - 4 p.m.
Sunday June 21 & 28 from 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.
175 Bluxome St San Francisco, CA 94107
Priced at $629,000
2 BR/1.5 BA
Listing Agent: Gina Pio Roda
Coffee shop of choice
Philz Coffee
Favorite Restaurants in the Area
Favorite Places to Go
Ballpark, downtown shops, Embarcadero
Best Features of Your Home
Great location, high ceilings, hardwood floors
Favorite Room in the House
Family room
Any Remodeling Since You Purchased the Home
- Eco Timber Brazilian cherry hardwood floors
- Step-in master closet w/ shoji doors
- Installed custom blinds, track lighting, stainless steel appliances, glass tub-shower doors
- Custom painting
What’s in the Neighborhood
Great restaurants, Safeway/Whole Foods/Trader Joes all within a couple of blocks, Mission Bay Library, UCSF Mission Bay Campus, Mission Creek park (w/kayaks), AT&T Giants ballpark, Caltrain, Muni Rail.
What Will You Miss Most?
Easy access to EVERYTHING, Giants games and Saturday walks to the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market.
June 8, 2009
Let’s look at our May brokerage stats for the San Francisco Bay Area to see how what our clients are doing right now reflects what’s happening in the market.
Our Clients Love Our Fanatical Service
We survey every client and track every transaction in a central customer database. For the surveys we received in May from our Bay Area clients:
- 20 clients responded to our customer-satisfaction survey and posted a review online, down from 31 April.
- All 20 of those clients, or 100%, would recommend Redfin to a friend, up from 97% in April.
In these surveys, Redfin asks customers to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Redfin to a friend on a 0-to-10 scale. Customers who rated 6 or higher count as people who would recommend Redfin to a friend.
More People Are Making Offers On Homes
In May, our Bay Area clients were busy touring homes and making offers:
- Redfin clients toured 1,326 homes in May, up from 1,194 homes toured in April.
- Our clients submitted 64 signed offers on homes, up from 56 in April.
- Our Bay Area agents were busy working on these signed offers:
o Charmaine Frank: 23 offers
o Jim Holt: 17 offers
o Gina Pio Roda: 15 offers
o Miawand Bayan: 9 offers
- 17 of these offers or 27% were on bank-owned foreclosures, down from 38% in April.
We also had a great home-buying class in May. Fifty-five people came to our Palo Alto class to learn about the home-buying process and meet our agents. Check out the slide deck from the class.
It’s Taking 33 Days To Close On A Home
In May, the time it took our Bay Area clients to close on their homes was 6 days shorter than in April:
- For our clients who bought re-sales, the average time from initial agreement on terms to the close of the deal was 33 days, down from 39 days in April.
- 0 of our clients failed to get financing, down from 2 in April
- 1 deal failed the home inspection, up from 0 in April.
- Of our closed deals, the average discount off list price for homes sold was 3.66%, up from 3.51% in April.
Look For Our June Report
We’ll be back next month with our analysis of the June numbers. Let us know what you’d like to see in that report.
June 5, 2009
Come out and tour this perfect home for a family close to great schools, restaurants and BART. Check out the seller’s comments below.
Open House Dates & Times:
Saturday and Sunday, June 6 & 7 from 12 p.m. - 4 p.m.
40461 Verne St Fremont, CA 94538
Priced at $535,000
4 BR/2 BA
Listing agent: Miawand Bayan
Seller Comments
Coffee Shop of Choice:
Bay Street Coffee Company
Favorite restaurants in the area:
Favorite places to go:
Coyote Hills for bayside walks/hikes; Mission Peak; Little Yosemite in Sunol, Lake Elizabeth (Fremont Central Park)
Best features of the home:
- Big enough for a family, small enough to maintain easily
- Front and back yards serve multiple purposes and are beautiful
- Indoor temperature is always comfortable
Favorite Room in the House
Kitchen…it’s a cozy place for a cup of tea, but can accommodate a big gathering of friends & family.
Most Romantic Spot in the Home:
Back yard, especially at night when it’s lit by the solar garden lanterns.
What’s in the neighborhood?
- Blacow School, across the street, K-6 grade
- Blacow Park, adjacent to school, great for dog-walking and romps in the playground for the little ones
- YMCA, a few blocks down Blacow Rd.
- Post Office, Fremont Hub, NewPark Mall, Washington Hospital, BART station, City Hall, Central Park within a 5 minute drive
What you will miss most:
- Great neighbors!
- A garden view from every window
- All the modern conveniences of a sturdy, well-built older home
May 26, 2009
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website.
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. - March data is released in May).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the San Francisco Bay Area* as of March:
March 2009
Month to Month: Down 2.2%
Year to Year: Down 30.1%
Change from Peak: Down 46.1% in 34 months
The following chart shows the Bay Area HPI scaled such that the May 2006 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Bay Area HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (May 2000).
At 2.2%, March’s month-to-month drop was the least severe seen in the Bay Area since July of last year. However, that didn’t stop the overall price “rewind” from pushing back into early 2000. As we pointed out last month, due to Case-Shiller’s broad geographical region for their San Francisco data, it is quite likely that there are some portions of the Bay Area that currently have prices rolled back into the ’90s.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare the Bay Area’s performance to other areas across the country:
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Following a trend we have seen down in SoCal, the Bay Area’s year-over-year drops actually appear to be moderating in recent months. March’s 30.1% drop was lower than February’s 31.0%, which was itself lower than January’s 32.4%. This is definitely a trend we will be keeping our eyes on in order to spot signs of an eventual bottom as early as possible.
*[Case-Shiller defines the San Francisco Bay Area as the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo.]
May 8, 2009
Let’s look at our brokerage stats for the San Francisco Bay Area to see how what our clients are doing right now reflects what’s happening in the market.
Our Clients Love Our Fanatical Service
We survey every client and track every transaction in a central customer database. For the surveys we received in April from our Bay Area clients:
- 31 clients responded to our customer-satisfaction survey and posted a review online, up from 20 March.
- 30 of those clients, or 97%, would recommend Redfin to a friend, up from 95% in March.
In these surveys, Redfin asks customers to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Redfin to a friend on a 0-to-10 scale. Customers who rated 6 or higher count as people who would recommend Redfin to a friend.
More People Are Looking At Foreclosed Properties
In April, our Bay Area clients were busy touring homes and making offers:
- Redfin clients toured 1,194 homes in March, up 21% from the 984 homes toured in March.
- Our clients submitted 56 signed offers on homes, up from 54 in March.
- Our Bay Area agents were busy working on these signed offers:
o Jim Holt: 19 offers
o Charmaine Frank: 18 offers
o Gina Pio Roda: 14 offers
o Miawand Bayan: 5 offers
- 21 of these offers or 38% were on bank-owned foreclosures, up from 26% in March.
“This increase in offers on bank-owned foreclosures is mainly due to listing agents pricing these homes below market value to attract attention and generate multiple offers,” says Redfin Bay Area agent Miawand Bayan. “We’re seeing a lot of offers on these aggressively-priced bank-owned homes, especially in the South Bay and East Bay.”
We also had a 64 people come to our April home-buying class in Oakland class to learn about the home-buying process and meet our agents. Check out the slide deck from the class.
It’s Taking 39 Days To Close On A Home
In April, it took our Bay Area clients 4 days longer to close on their homes than in March:
- For our clients who bought re-sales, the average time from initial agreement on terms to the close of the deal was 39 days, up from 35 days in March.
- 2 of our clients failed to get financing, up from 1 in March
- All of our client’s deals passed the home inspection; 2 failed the inspection in March.
- Of our closed deals, the average discount off list price for homes sold was 3.51%, down from 5.93% in March.
Look For Our May Report
We’ll be back next month with our analysis of the May numbers. Let us know what you’d like to see in that report.
May 1, 2009
We’re hosting a focus group on Tuesday, May 5 and we’re looking for about 10 participants to talk about how we can make Redfin better.
If you’re interested, take this short survey so that we can find out a little more about you. If you’re selected, we’ll get in touch.
We’ll give each participant $50 and we’ll provide dinner and drinks.
Update: Thanks for your interest, we’re now full! If you have ideas about how we can improve Redfin please let us know in the forums.
April 28, 2009
It’s time once again for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI).
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. - February data is released in April).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the San Francisco Bay Area* as of February:
February 2009
Month to Month: Down 3.2%
Year to Year: Down 31.0%
Change from Peak: Down 44.9% in 33 months
The following chart shows the Bay Area HPI scaled such that the May 2006 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Bay Area HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (August 2000).
The Bay Area HPI is now up to approximately an eight and a half year rewind. Even if we accept the premise that this is due in large part to the broad geographical area covered by the Case-Shiller data, that means that there are likely some places where prices are comparable to the 1990s.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare the Bay Area’s performance to other areas across the country:
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Of the 20 cities tracked by Case-Shiller, only Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Miami have fallen further from their respective peaks than San Francisco has. The decline here has been swift and stunning, and as of yet has shown little sign of easing. Yikes.
*[Case-Shiller defines the San Francisco Bay Area as the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo.]
