Which Cities, Towns, and Neighborhoods have the most price reductions?
Today Redfin is launching the new Sweet Digs, Analytical Edition. We’re proud to introduce Tim Ellis as the curator of this new effort. Tim will bring the same independent, data-driven perspective to Sweet Digs that first established him as a pre-eminent real estate blogger, but with pricing data that only a broker—and sometimes only Redfin—can access. He will be joined by other bloggers providing real-time insights on how contracts are being negotiated in neighborhoods around the area.
Sweet Digs is still a work in progress so if you have ideas about the types of posts you’d like to see — or if you’d like to contribute an analytical post of your own — just drop me (glenn at redfin dot com) or Tim (the_tim at thatchmound dot com) a line or leave a comment below. Thanks for all your support, and we look forward to hearing from you!
Regards, Glenn Kelman, CEO Redfin
I’d like to thank Glenn and the good people at Redfin for giving me the opportunity to delve into real estate data and share insights with readers from around the country. To kick things off, let’s take a 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.
First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:
Of the 133 cities/towns we ranked in the Bay Area, only 3 had a price-reduced ratio of sixty percent or more, while 30 came in with fifty percent or more. The south bay dominated the top ten most price-reduced list, with neighboring Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties taking seven spots. The remaining three cities in the top ten are over in Contra Costa County.
Here are the top ten cities with the least price-reduced listings:
In general, the cities that make up the top ten least price-reduced list are much closer to the bay, which is not particularly surprising. Even with BART, commuting from way out of town to the city centers can’t be fun, so I would expect demand to be stronger closer in, resulting in fewer sellers that need to drop their prices.
Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Bay Area neighborhoods for price reductions:
34 of the 156 neighborhoods we ranked in Redfin’s Bay Area coverage area had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. The top neighborhoods for price-reductions are much more geographically diverse than the top cities, with Santa Clara, Contra Costa, Almeda, and Solano counties all making appearances.
Lastly, let’s take a look at which neighborhoods had the least price-reduced listings taken off the market:
Neighborhoods with fewer price reductions tend to be considerably more expensive than those with the most price reductions, with median sold prices averaging twice as high. For example, the median price per square foot in San Jose’s The Village (the top price-reduced neighborhood) is currently $262, but in Berkeley Hills, at the bottom of the price-reduced list, the median price per square foot is $429.
