San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory: 1/4/10 (www.SocketSite.com)
Inventory of Active listed single-family homes, condos, and TICs in San Francisco fell 30% over the past two weeks driven by both sales and withdrawn or deactivated listings during the holidays and ended the year 29% under 2008 levels on a year-over-year basis but squarely between the listed inventory levels of 2006 and 2007.
34% of active listings in San Francisco have undergone at least one price reduction while the percentage of active listings that are either already bank owned (68) or seeking a short sale (86) has risen to 19%.
The standard SocketSite Listed Inventory footnote: Keep in mind that our listed inventory count does not include listings in any stage of contract (even those which are simply contingent) nor does it include listings for multi-family properties (unless the units are individually listed).
SocketSite’s San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory: 12/14/09 [SocketSite]

37 thoughts on “SocketSite’s San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory: 1/04/10”
  1. This market is pretty much flatlining. 2 long week-ends in a row and all the places I was following are currently withdrawn.
    What will come back and at what price will be interesting to watch.

  2. You jumped a bit fast on my post. I am saying essentially what you are saying. By flatlining I meant no action because everyone was out and most active listings were temporarily withdrawn.
    with the holiday cheers and all, do you think many listings will come back with a higher asking price? There were a few like this mid last year. I wonder if the market is ready for these all-out bullish moves again?
    Cheers.

  3. what is the average fall for the past 3 years (normally is shown as a comparison)
    also am interested in % below last year for SFHs and condos if available!

  4. I suppose the end-of-year hyatus is a way to start with a blank slate: 0 days on market. Price history wiped from RE sites like Trulia and such. Get properties judged on their own merits instead of their market past.

  5. it’ll be interesting to see if the post super-bowl rush of properties continues this year. it happens every year, but was especially pronounced the last 2 years.
    no reason to try to use this data to mean much. it’s the middle of winter and holiday season.
    I’ll be interested to see what happens this May/June, (theoretically) after the Fed stops purchasing Mortgage Backed Securities and the housing credit expires. (I fully expect much support to be extended, or at least continued covertly in some other way).

  6. “Get properties judged on their own merits instead of their market past.”
    Yes, this would be a good move forward for the SF market. If properties were judged alone on their merits of providing housing, then prices should come down to closer parity with the rental market.
    Still the “real DOM” is an interesting metric as it gives an indication of whether or not the seller is in touch with the actual market conditions. The greater the real DOM, the more out of touch the seller is.

  7. Maybe it’s too late for ’10 predictions now that it’s the 4th, but here’s a 100% gimme: The number of Used House Salespersons applying for food stamps will skyrocket in 2010.
    Happy New Year!

  8. The number of Used House Salespersons applying for food stamps will skyrocket in 2010.
    Not gonna happen. At the right price, all homes sell and the realtors make their commissions. As prices fall, the realtors can get more and more aggressive with the sellers to keep dropping until things sell. If people can’t sell at the market price because they don’t have cash to bring to the closing, the realtors will start getting smarter about refusing to list such hopeless cases.
    CoCo county realtors are having boom times. Prices have fallen and they are more than making up in volume for the lower prices, so their incomes are UP, not down, though they are working harder for the same money, for sure.

  9. The number of Used House Salespersons applying for food stamps will skyrocket in 2010.
    Oh? I think you made that prediction several years ago.

    If two beers made that prediction, it was spot on! In SF volume has continually plummeted since 2005, and prices are down considerably the last couple of years. Lots of realtors have found no spots available at the far smaller feeding trough. But tipster is right that this may actually reverse soon as prices fall further and sales correspondingly pick up. Maybe some of those starving realtors can get away from the food stamps and back to the trough.

  10. Not sure about the food stamps part, or whether it was actually two beers or somebody else who went to the http://www.cutdownbot/foodstamps/realtors card, but the prediction was better back then. Lots of realtors have already left the business. (Caveat, what they are buying food with at the supermarket is unknown.) However, to hear my colleagues tell it, we’re all fielding calls from buyers right now. I’ve personally picked up five buyers in the last three weeks. The problem is that they all want good SFR properties in decent areas for under 700K. The market isn’t there, and FHA is making anything close pretty competitive. So CoCo is probably a no-go.

  11. I am getting tired of rapping on this (and no, I am not a RE Agent) but
    Where are the ACTUAL PRICE DROPs in Condos, TICS, SFH that are in the 500K to 1.5 million range ???
    I am still going to Open Houses in Pac. Heights, Nob Hill, North Beach and some parts of Noe Valley.
    Haven’t seen any significant drops in prices. And no, don’t tell me to bid lower. Cos 3 homes on Bush St and Sutter St (between Divisadero and Presidio ) have sold at or near asking within a month….
    I can give you actual locations just so you know I am not ‘talking in air’.
    Bottomline, I don’t see any significant drops (30, 40%) in good victorian homes in good neighborhood.
    Prove me wrong with specific listings !!!

  12. “The problem is that they all want good SFR properties in decent areas for under 700K.”
    Exactly. SF buyers cannot, or will not, pay prices that are multiples of comparable rents. Three years ago you could get no-down neg-am loans, so people shrugged and dove in. Who cares? Other peoples’ money. But now that one must spend one’s own money, they aren’t buying. Hence, sales continue to slow except at the extreme low end (where, not coincidentally, the FHA again allows buyers to put nothing down and dive in). This simply proves the point that the demand is not there at current asking prices, which will lead to further price declines.

  13. Maybe. We’ll see. There’s also a buoying effect that’s occurring between 600 and 1M. People who are willing to buy with 20 to 25 % percent down and within this range, utilizing FHA. This buyer is not every other phone call that a brokerage gets, but they’re out there.

  14. Chad:
    of course desirable properties in desirable locales haven’t fallen as much as undesirable properties or good properties in undesirable locales.
    it takes a LONNNNNGGGG time, and much of the damage will be in real terms, not nominal terms (in other words, the damage occurs due to inflation).
    Our govt’s efforts have slowed the fall in housing, but it comes at a huge cost. what did you think the trillions of dollars that the govt floated into housing would do?
    thus, they have delayed and IMO probably prolonged the housing slump. it is not inconceivable that we may have 10+ years of downturn. (my initial estimate back in 2007 was that the duration of the downturn would last until Dec 2011, but I may extend that out).
    who would have believed in the 1980’s that Japanese RE would be worth LESS in 2009 than in 1989???? But it happened.
    who would have thought in Dec 1999 that Stocks would be 20% UNDER their Dec 1999 level in Dec 2009? But it happened.
    and likewise, who can conceive of housing prices in SF being LESS in 2017 compared to 2007? Many people can’t, but I certainly can on an inflation adjusted basis.
    can housing roar back? possibly, especially short term with government intervention. is there any reason to expect a major housing surge anytime soon? no way.
    RE only got where it got due to very loose lending (0 down, Option ARM, no documentation, etc) which shifted the demand curve far to the right. How on Earth can we compete with that again???? I’m not sure that even our govt can do it, although they’re trying (3% FHA down with 6% seller financing and 8k+ tax credit).
    Credit crises take MANY YEARS to play out. Not just one or two. MANY.
    many different markets are on govt life support right now. it is as of yet unclear to me or anybody how long govt can continue this, and what the exit strategy is. (hint: there is no exit strategy).

  15. Zero down and no docs, between 1M and 1.5M, which is what Chad is talking about? Not so much. Option ARM, OK.

  16. I’m with ex SF-er on this. Many miles to go before we sleep on this adjustment from a real basis.
    Had an interesting conversation with a guy who works with big banks a lot about the new products their developing now for the strategic defaulters.
    Folks with previously immaculate credit who simply walked b/c they (like many on this site suggest) ran the #’s and decided not worth it.
    Conventional credit / risk models don’t have anything to account for that behavior, and banks don’t have existing products to serve that credit profile. Will be interesting to see what new offering our friends at have to offer those who make plunge.

  17. hint: there is no exit strategy
    You got it right. RE cycles are 10-years easy. Politicians in charge today only see as far as the next mid-term or end-term election or 2 years, 4 years at best.
    We all saw this series of short-sighted moves that got the job done. It can be summarized with “mortgaging the house to pay off the credit cards”. Yeah, what’s the worse that could happen?
    Kicking down the problem 2-4 years is not too hard. It’s already one year after Obama’s ceremony and we’re going into mid-terms very quickly. If he can hold on to the current gains in the economy (at a great expense) he’ll manage to keep enough clout to keep Congress.
    Now, solving he problem would take real balls. A very bad recession, massive debt/equity destruction, the closing of a few very big banks, huge state defaults and so on. Tearing that nasty band aid out. No politician will ever do this because it would unravel in 2-3 years and would make everyone really angry at Obama right when he’d be trying for a second term.
    Plebe is happy for now. No riots in the streets. Unemployment down. But we didn’t end the cycle. We simply stretched it. We’ll have to start paying all that debt back because if you thought banks were reluctant to reduce principal, you can be sure our debtors are sure not going to let us off the hook. I think the last 1/2 of Obama’s 2nd term could be an interesting 2 years as he’ll have less thoughts on the polls and more on his legacy.

  18. My source for “pent up supply” went all hinky today so I’m going off my memory from yesterday (or the weekend?) Homes in some state of foreclosure (NODs, NOTS, bank owned) stand at around 1610 units in Ess Eff. Two weeks ago we were at 1619. Pent up supply peaked six weeks ago at 1695. Standard disclosures about noise in the data, you know the drill.

  19. Funny that Fannie Mae even felt the need to make an announcement — clear PR stuff. It’s not like quasi-governmental employees were actually working then anyway.

  20. This site has the full-year MLS numbers for SF:
    http://www.rereport.com/sf/index_a.html
    It provides medians and averages, which are from from perfect, but with large sample sizes like this they are pretty good.
    Hard to spin these as anything but an epic downturn in 2009, accelerating the 2008 trend, and that is despite SF not falling (yet) as much as its neighbors. Sales flat from low 2008 numbers and SFR and condo medians and averages both with double-digit declines. All despite the trillion dollar propping. Wait until those props are eased away . . .

  21. re: anon at January 10,2010 1:32 PM
    An almost hidden gen in this report posted by anon to fuel the DOM / Official list price discussion:
    2009
    —-
    SP/LP (Sale Price / List Price)
    99.1%
    SP/OLP (Sale Price / Original List Price)
    88.3%
    This shows clearly that the price resets on the MLS do affect the way the performance is reported.
    If the last list price is taken as a basis, then the sale price is at a very sweet 99.1%. If you take the Original List price, it’s not so sweet anymore: 88.3%, or a whooping 11.7% average cut.
    Looking at history, numbers were the same until roughly 2007. After that the stats diverge completely. Another interesting point: We were in “over asking” territory also until 2007. In 2007, the reality was “under asking” but the last listed price numbers were “over asking”. If they were accountants, I’d hire them right away.

  22. wow, good find. But I think even this paints too rosy of a picture. I think that “OLP” refers to the “original” list price only where the listing stayed on the MLS and then reflected price reductions off that. But if a listing was pulled then re-listed at a new lower price, I think the new price would then be the “OLP.” So we’re still missing the “real” OLP here (it would take too much digging to process that). If that “real” OLP were included, the SP/OLP ratio would surely refelct even bigger discounts than the 11.7% average cut reflected here.

  23. anon, I didn’t find anything that could prove or disprove your theory. I hope the smart people at RE Report are keeping track of the listings. After all tracking uniquely identifiable homes is not rocket science. Simply store the address for future match. They’d need to identify re-listings from separate sales (say a new buyer puts the property for sale right away, that’s 2 separate listings) and we all know the MLS is not perfect at recording sales as there is no hard cold cash incentive at doing it. They’d have to dig into other databases to do that.

  24. big deal. listing prices are set by hopeful homeowners or the brokers they hired. and they often hire the broker who tells them what they want to hear.

  25. Yes sellers can be delusional. I just wonder how much professionals were also caught into this. I suspect both sides were in some form of denial. A “glass half-full” which ends up being 1/4 full.

  26. “big deal. listing prices are set by hopeful homeowners”
    And yet, from 2000-2007, the bubble years, the listing price was too low as sales prices were higher than the list prices. This reversed in 2007 and continued in a big way in the other direction in 2008. “Hopeful” or delusional sellers is not the explanation. The market downturn that has forced market prices lower is a much more reasonable explanation.

  27. “And yet, from 2000-2007, the bubble years, the listing price was too low as sales prices were higher than the list prices. This reversed in 2007”
    2002 and 2006, for example, were quite different.

  28. “The market downturn that has forced market prices lower is a much more reasonable explanation.”
    big deal. trying to quantify the declines using listing prices is half-assed. some guy lists his house at $x, and ends up selling at $x -40% does not mean that prices are down 40%.
    typical bear reasoning on this board.

  29. some guy lists his house at $x, and ends up selling at $x -40% does not mean that prices are down 40%.
    True. But these stats are global, not about one guy. Nobody is denying there are a few deluded souls or people who put a high listing price out of pure vanity (just to show one can hold a 10M+ house empty for 5 years and still sleep like a baby: that will impress the country club pals). What matters is that over the volume this was a significant shift and it all comes from market psychology. Now I think the swing is now going the other way in the market, but the pain is still there to feel. These stats quantify this pain.
    I think understanding this mechanism is a chance at grasping true value. Negative environments do help make great buys. Think buying bank stocks March 2009 when all the bears were calling for the end of civilization. Of course bulls also need to keep their eyes open for when the tide reverses. Always keep an open mind to opportunity.

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