January Marin Recap

2008 sure didn’t start off with a bang in Marin.  The MarinIJ reported this week that January home sales were the slowest it’s ever been in almost 20 years.  To put it more bluntly, the title of the article notes, “Marin sales plummet.”  A total of 122 homes exchanged hands.  Relative to 2007, this was a nearly 40% drop. 

However, there are a couple rays of sunshine in the gloomy news: 

1) “Marin was also the Bay Area county with the lowest rate of foreclosure home sales. Only 1.8 percent of the January resales in Marin involved homes that were foreclosed in 2007. Across the Bay Area, about 19 percent of sales were foreclosed homes, or one of every five homes.”

2)  “…The median single-family home price climbed to $990,000, up 5.9 percent from $935,000 in January 2007. The median single-family home price was $835,750 in December.”

I feel inclined to make a mention of #2 – but as I have noted in a previous blog, I wouldn’t take the reported median to heart. 

Despite the sluggish start, it seems to me already that the market has already picked up a bit.  With interest rates at attractive levels, my prediction is that more folks will start coming out of the woodwork as the weather gets nicer.

Chart:  Marin IJ