Where are buyers getting the biggest discounts?

While the number and speed of price reductions is certainly interesting information (to some), what really matters to folks out there in the market right now is the size of price reductions. Better yet, how receptive are sellers to accepting an offer below their asking price?

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Where are buyers currently getting the biggest discount off the asking price in San Francisco? Knowing which neighborhoods are softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price will better equip you when making an offer.

In the charts below, we have taken all sales data from the last two and a half months in San Francisco and sorted it by zip code. 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 zips 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).

Unfortunately, this data is only for the actual city of San Francisco. There are many different MLSes here in the Bay Area, and we’re still working out the kinks in trying to integrate the data from all of them to bring you a better picture of the area as a whole. For now though, I thought I’d at least share what I have for SF proper.

Here are the top ten zip codes with the largest overall discount:

Discounts are relatively rare here in SF proper, with no neighborhood averaging over 1.5% off the final list price. This could mean that either sellers are doing a good job of pricing their homes according to buyers’ expectations, or that they’re just not willing to negotiate.

Here are the ten zip codes with the smallest discounts:

Of the 749 sales we tracked in the 2.5-month period, only 18 homes sold for more than 10% off the asking price, while 348 homes sold for more than asking.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on this data once we have been able to run it for a number of months, to see which neighborhoods are trending toward larger discounts and which are trending toward selling at full price.

Buyers should be aware that not all neighborhoods are created equal. While an offer 10% below list price may have a good chance of being accepted in a few neighborhoods where buyers are few and far between, many parts of San Francisco are still seeing enough interest to command full price or more.