No Crystal Ball Needed: Just the Facts
The geniuses at Redfin have kindly shared a bit of mined MLS data with me for April and May 2008. At first it just looked like numbers running across the page, but after focusing my eyes, there is a wealth of information that might be beneficial to all of you.
First off, I was surprised at how few deals actually closed during those two months in San Mateo County, given the number of homes on the market. It certainly gave me a better understanding of the overwhelming number of months of inventory that is available in many cities, which has been a concern of late. With a total of 24 San Mateo County cities reporting, the majority (2/3rds) sold less than 30 homes each in that two-month period. The higher-end cities, Woodside, Atherton, Portola Valley. and Hillsborough, although small in population, continued to do well with 9, 12, 15, and 19 sales, respectively, but other small burgs like Brisbane, Moss Beach, La Honda and Montara only had 1 or 2 in the 60 day spread. In the middle of the pack were Foster City (33), South SF (37), San Carlos (37), and Burlingame (41), and doing their very best to move real estate were Menlo Park with 62, Redwood City with 66, and the clear winner by a mile, San Mateo with 93. I feel that Menlo Park, like San Carlos and Palo Alto, is a popular, slightly upscale town with good amenities. The homes are nice, of good size, there is a great downtown, you are close to freeways and the schools have a good reputation. Being close to Stanford and at the northern tip of Silicon Valley probably doesn’t hurt either. Redwood City has a lot of listings, so proportionally they are not doing as well as Menlo Park, but what they do have to offer is much more affordable housing, and we are talking under the $600-700,000 mark. As for San Mateo, it has elements of MP and RWC: access to freeways, great downtown, and a fair share of affordable listings. Plus it is the closest city to the SM Bridge and the East Bay workplaces, and good proximity to San Francisco.
The good news in the myriad of numbers I stared at for an hour, is the Final Price vs. List Price. It seems, for the most part, that homes are selling for closer to list than previously thought. (My guess is that the MLS calculates the sale price against the most recent list price, meaning that they are not necessarily using the original list price, but the price at the time of sale, which could be after multiple reductions.) Only one city ranked over 100%, meaning more homes sold for over list than under, with a final score of 100.81%. Can you guess which one? No, not Atherton or Woodside. It was Menlo Park. Coming close was Portola Valley at 99.93%, San Carlos at 99.39% and, surprisingly, Redwood City at 99.22%. All but one of the remaining cities came in above 90%. That one lonely city at the bottom? La Honda with a final vs. list price of 73.96%. Given that there were only two sales in two months, this figure, along with the average sales price below, seem more of an aberration than an actual ongoing fact. Its remote location requires a particular buyer; someone who wants a bit of isolation but is still within 30 minutes of the action, maybe someone a bit quirky. In all honesty, I have been considering a move there, just so I no longer have neighbors whose every word I can hear, but it will bear keeping an eye on the figures for this town.
Finally, we have average sales prices for the cities in San Mateo County, which ranged from $278,750 in La Honda to $3,745,111 in Woodside. The lower end of the spectrum could be found in EPA ($370,539), Half Moon Bay ($494,533) and Daly City ($487,240), with the majority of the cities clocking in between $500,000 and $800,000. The communities with the highest sales prices (over $1mil) were, not surprisingly, Atherton, Burlingame, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Portola Valley, and Woodside.
Next Week: Some number crunching on the Santa Clara County MLS.
