Last Tuesday the SFHomeBlog posted a number of sobering facts related to home sales in San Francisco for the week following Labor Day:
• Fewest number of contingent properties in one week in 2006
• Fewest number of pending properties in one week in 2006
• Fewest number of sold properties in one week in 2006
• New low for currently pending properties in 2006
These are four facts with which we can’t disagree. We do, however, take exception to the following three statements from the same post:
Statement 1: “The majority of our fall inventory has just hit. It will be all be piece-meal for the rest of the year with lower weekly numbers of new listings.” According to ZipRealty, almost 250 single family homes, condos, and TICs hit the market over the past seven days, which is about double the number of opposing sales, and ~17% of the current inventory. That’s “piece-meal?”
Statement 2: “Inventory has been dropping since just after Memorial Day with a one-week exception (that’s right) the weekend after July 4th.” According to our numbers, Active listed inventory steadily increased for the first three weeks of June (up ~20%), briefly dipped for about 10 days (down ~8%), rebounded again from July 5th through the end of the month (up ~13%), steadily dropped over the month of August (down ~12%), and once again rebounded after Labor Day (up ~25% over the past two weeks). As it stands, Active listed inventory is up ~33% since Memorial Day.
Statement 3: “Difference is, through all of this, the number of sales has been steady.” According to DataQuick, there were 626 sales in May, 652 Sales in June, and 485 sales in July (that’s down 22% from May, down 25% from June, and down 24% from July 2005). August numbers should be released this week. Keep in mind that over the past two years sales volume has peaked in June and then tailed off through the end of the year.
In a nutshell, sales activity has slowed while inventory continues to build. And for added context, consider that current listed inventory is back to — if not higher than — the level which the SFHomeBlog characterized as “a veritable saturation . . . of way too many homes“ and “a one-time occurrence” (a year ago).
∙ The Best (or worst) Week of 2006 [SFHomeBlog]
∙ Inventory Update: 5/18/06 [SocketSite]
Same thing happened this time last year – flood of inventory post Memorial Day, and most of it was gone by Thanksgiving. It will be interesting to see what happens this year.
“A one time occurence” and you can quote me on that!!! That is really funny. I wish Matt, or anyone else could tell the future on S.F. home values, but its a fools game to try and predict these things; let along go on record on your blog making those statements. Fact is no one knows where this is all headed, especially here in San Francisco. But the buyers are sending a pretty strong message with the current activity levels.