Inventory of Active listed single-family homes, condos, and TICs in San Francisco rose 3.4% over the past two weeks versus an average of 0.3% for the same two weeks over the past four years.
Current inventory levels are down 8% on a year-over-year basis but up 17% versus the average of the past four years (up 26% if you exclude 2009) and up 58% as compared to 2006. Inventory of single-family homes in San Francisco is down 7% on a year-over-year basis but up 1% versus 2008 and up 21% versus 2007 (we don’t have the split for 2006).
30% of active listings in San Francisco have undergone at least one price reduction with the percentage of active listings that are either already bank owned (63) or seeking a short sale (136) holding steady at 13% over the past two weeks (up 8% in absolute terms).
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: 3/29/10 [SocketSite.com]
∙ Will Pent-Up Demand Outstrip Pent-Up Supply? [SocketSite]
I remember the spring of 2008 market well, making this the key line:
Inventory of single-family homes in San Francisco is … up 1% versus 2008
I’m not sure when all those desperate, trapped SFH-owners are going to flood the market with quality listings, but it hasn’t happened yet.
An interesting correlation with Zillow’s home value index over the past 5 years:
see this chart
I picked 3 prime areas: PH, NV, NB
The slide hasn’t really stopped in these neighborhoods. Switching in $/sf reveals a similar trend. The steepest of the decline happened between Q3 2008 and Q1 2009. When compared with SS’s inventory, there’s an interesting parallel of high inventory and price decrease. The decline still goes on according to Zillow, confirmed by the current high inventory.
The issue I will have with the comments that will follow this post are that people in the market for a 1/1 or 2/2 are not the same people that would buy a single family.
Try looking up 2/2 inventory in some of the better areas, there is not much out there.
Steady as she goes…
’nuff said.
this spring’s rise in inventory is steeper than years past excluding the Armageddon year of 2009.
it is possible that part of this is due to the First Time Homebuyer’s Credit expiring soon. Many people may be listing their properties now with the hope of snaring a FTHB before the credit expires.
it’ll be intriguing to see what happens after the credit expires.
also: if you note, looking at the last 2 years, the rise in inventory leveled off around now… so a guage of the market will be whether or not this year’s inventory levels plateau now.
obviously a 1/1 and 2/2 are not perfect substitutes for SFHs. However, as we’ve seen, SFHs are nonetheless affected by 1/1 and 2/2 inventory. IF 1/1 and 2/2 inventory becomes such that we see more downward pressure on 1/1 and 2/2 pricing, then that pressure may translate into pressure on SFHs as well.
2/2s is a pretty restrictive scope. I am looking at 4/2.5 and am not seeing lots of them neither.
@lol: My point exactly. It would be good to know which inventory is really driving up the quantities, because I can say, at least from a 2/2 perspective, there is little inventory.
If the increase in inventory is 1/1s or small houses out in the Mission, that is one thing, but its not the broader housing market.
MLS has 185 4/2.5 places. That seems like a lot to me.
@sparky: It depends on what locations you are looking at.
My general assumption is that less desirable places have a lot of inventory, while the more desirable locations have little inventory.
sparky,
I was looking only in prime. The narrower you look, the more likely you’ll see local anomalies. This is why I think the Zillow charts are pretty relevant. Most prime areas haven’t fully recovered from the plunge, and from the link I provided, the decrease has gone on at least up to February.
lol,
Let me guess you want a “prime” 4/2.5 and you want it for way less than the Zestimate.
Not looking at 4/2.5 at all. Keep the snark to yourself. Why am I even bothering.
The SS post is macro. I went a level finer with NV, NB, PH. SFRE went straight to the type of home. My point is that the finer the grain, the lesser the accuracy.
We just looked for a year…and, we just bought. I don’t think the housing picks are as wonderful as a downturn would have it to be. People aren’t doctoring homes up before putting them on the market like in past years. There are more old baths and old kitchens than ever before.
Oh, and, the treasured 3+ beds on the same floor, two parking spaces, walking distance from lots of stuff home is not sitting on the market for long.
This is a different market than a couple of years ago…
I think what is sitting are homes where owners aren’t dealing with the fact their home is not worth the sales price AND homes that really aren’t in the best of best locations (for each neighborhood)…
Sorry….the good picks are selling! The bottom has not dropped out…
If, and the word if is important, if prices are really going to decline more, I really believe it will be incredibly gradual. But, hey, the economy is starting to pick up to the point where economists are on the edge ready to call when it the recession WAS over..
SFRs in the Mission are selling instantly, so that’s not it.
To close this issue, from the Zillow interactives: if you pick prime, you see an ongoing decrease; if you pick sub-prime you see either a flattening or even an increase.
Sign that prime lagged subprime in the decrease, but also lags in the recovery. The “we can wait it out” inventory still needs to be churned through.
So, if we are seeing that the inventory is not SFRs in the Mission or 2/2s or places in ‘prime’ areas, then where exactly is the inventory? Excelsior??
lol, I thought, “I am looking at 4/2.5 and am not seeing lots of them neither” meant you were actively looking at property and not just looking at that on Zillow. Sorry, my bad. I did have some snark in my comment, but you’re saying prime hasn’t recovered from the plunge per Zillow, and I don’t think you can use that chart to decide what a single property is worth. Sorry for the snark.
From this (see 3rd chart):
http://www.altosresearch.com/paragon/latest/paragon_market_update_zip_based_cmid_55_zipd_none.html
it appears that SFR inventory is currently higher than at any time in 2007 or 2009 and approaching the peak in 2008 when the markets collapsed. All this talk about “no inventory” and “nothing good” is just bunk. Look at the DOM chart (second from the bottom). The top tier is sky high, showing that “good” places are not flying off the shelves. And the $/sf continues its steep decline.
People can spout all the unverifiable anecdotes they want about “not SFRs,” “not in prime neighborhoods,” “only condos” yada yada yada. Who you gonna believe, those trying to sell you something or your own eyes?
The 15bd/1ba market has absolutely collapsed. I can’t find any inventory anywhere at any price.
There are 567 SFRs on the MLS in SF as of a few minutes ago. 173 of them are in D-10 and the worse parts of 3. Is that a lot of inventory? How can you possibly spin that as a lot of inventory?
Depends. How many SFRs sold in SF in March?
anonn, as you are fully aware, D10 always has by far the most SFRs listed and sold. Pretty obvious who is spinning here.
I linked to city-wide charts. You seem to be arguing that D10 listings comprise an extraordinarily high percentage of listings right now. Why don’t you tell us how many non-D10 SFRs have been listed each of the past 5-6 years at this point in time?
SFR inventory is very high right now — close to record levels, it appears (at least as far back as I can find any data). That’s not spin but fact.
Two hundred twelve SFRs were sold in March. No, you’re making conclusions and assumptions while I’m stating numbers and asking questions. I don’t like the way you don’t think, so any conclusion you might arrive at from one of my statements isn’t going to be in keeping with what I’m thinking. Oh, so I can’t talk about D-10 and worse D-3 after someone else brought up prime and non prime areas? Are you a spinning instructor? I thought that spinning classes went out in the mid 90s.
I am Anon…(with the dots), not to be confused with Anon (without the dots).
We were not looking in the Mission but what we were looking at was flying off the shelf, too. We were looking for a basic family home in a few select neighborhoods, on a few select blocks within each neighborhood…
There is a difference with what is sitting and what is moving. What was sitting in our price range was uninteresting or over-priced. What was moving in our price range was either extremely interesting and/or priced well.
Any reason in particular you didn’t break that 212 down between D-10/worse D-3 and other?
“I don’t like the way you don’t think, so any conclusion you might arrive at from one of my statements isn’t going to be in keeping with what I’m thinking.”
Oh, that’s crystal clear. Can’t possibly argue with such unimpeachable logic.
You tend to inappropriately try to criticize “logic” where writers would talk about syntax. In true kneejerk internet poseur noisome fashion. That wasn’t the best sentence I ever wrote, true. But you’re Mr. “I’m going to tell you what this actually means.” And you don’t get me, so it’s not working for you.
@anon, I answered the question you asked. But there were 55 worse D3 and 10 sales.
The difference between 2006 (low point) and 2010 is 544 residences in higher inventory. While this is 57% higher, the absolute number does not appear to be that much of a difference given the difference in the economic situation. At least in my opinion given the size of the City.
As a side note, a friend of mine decided to sell his condo on Church street, a two bedroom, two bath with just over 800 sq. ft. Pretty small imo and I wished him luck. The listing price was $720K and it sold for $715K within 4 days on the market. I was estatic for him, but pretty shocked that prices are still this high.
^ I assume it included parking? Was it a nicer old building that was renovated, or more of a soulless 60’s ugly box? If the latter, $715k is surprising.
Can we see what the graph above looks like if we plot by Zip Code?
I am afraid the demographic of housing may have shifted year-to-year.
We are looking at 1800 by end of May. Watch the banks dump their shadow inventory for Spring time.
Yeah, I think you are right this time Carlito: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/report-bofa-to-increase-foreclosures.html
“People can spout all the unverifiable anecdotes they want about “not SFRs,” “not in prime neighborhoods,” “only condos””
are we circling back to the “real SF ” conversations. those were the good ole days.
Watch the banks dump their shadow inventory for Spring time.
They read somewhere that the market was back and that we had hit bottom last year.
I think this is going to turn out like the early 90s. Jobless recovery on the heels of an asset bubble pop followed by a liquidation of inventory after “holding tight” sellers and institutions realize the 1989 price would take time to come back. After they sold was the real start of the next leg up. It took 7-8 years, not 3 years like this current massive pop.
Reports like these were all over the web last week. While the ananlysts all see foreclosures showing a strong increase in 2010 and probably another leg down for home prices they are speaking nationally.
And of course everyone’s favorite, Mr Shiller, just had to weigh in as well and remind everyone of how the we got here and where we could be headed …
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/economy/11view.html
Oh and the Atalantic’s financial guy adds his own color commentary to Shiller and, well, it ain’t good either.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/shiller-why-the-housing-optimism/38814/
“Watch the banks dump their shadow inventory for Spring time.”
Everyone always likes to talk about “when” or “after”, like in “After the tax credit expires” or “when the government stops buying MBS”.
The drop in real estate prices, similar to the 25+% that occurred last year, is not going to repeat itself. We will likely be in a 5% band.
As for the inventory, take a look at what’s available in districts 5-9, not much thats good. The way people are posting you would think there are these great properties for sale at low prices, but thats not the case. And the good stuff has been selling fast, as has been mentioned in a couple of posts on this thread. Everytime something reasonable comes up, it sells. Many times all cash, indicating there has been a lot of people on the sideline. Inventory will increase, but as it increases people will come in to buy, keeping the pricing in that 5% range I mentioned. Its just one man’s hypothesis, but I wouldn’t say its all doom/gloom. As always, location and pricing is what its about.
@lol
Is West of Twin Peaks considered sub prime? Hope all of you get to read “The Big Short” by Lewis.
45hipster, yes it had parking, a quite building on Church and 17th (I think), most of those buildings are pretty non-descript. It is nice, but still, small and expensive. I believe it was built in the 80’s.
“Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program … (She)projected that as many as 1.9 million homeowners will lose their houses this year, up a notch from the 1.7 million in 2009. Some 200,000 families a month are being added to the foreclosure rolls.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/36497737
How does that opinion of a 200K estimated increase nationally pertain to SF? I think the BofA blurb is much more apt. They have all the Countrywide loans.
I wonder how much more bearing news like this has on SF, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/14/bloomberg1376-L0V8NM1A1I4H-1.DTL
than 200K more national foreclosures or even BofA to see more foreclosures?
^^^ Yes, the Intel profit announce is big talk around my office as they are our #1 customer. The feeling is that much of the profit came from cost cutting (including payments to vendors like us !) and before we can see the ripple effects we will need to see at least 2 more quarters of good profit out of INTC.
Good news and we are hoping for more. Effects to arrive in 2011 at the earliest.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=INTC&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Not much correlation between Intel and SF inventory levels over the last 5 years. Maybe successful tech workers are not as dumb as you think…
“successful tech workers are not as dumb as you think…”
That’s simply leading in all sorts of hater directions I don’t care to go.
Thanks MOD, for the balanced response..
How would you like it if every time some over priced tech gadget came out, it was justified like this: “This could sell well, there are many realtors in the area.”
Oh, so you’re a bad writer AND a hater. OK. pass.
Not a hater, I just find it insulting that you routinely imply that tech workers have more $’s than sense.
No. You’re jumping around to various points based upon preconceived notions in your own mind.
I display an article about Intel. It’s had two good quarters in a row now. Most analysts, and people in tech track Intel as an indicator of the sector. It’s a known fact that the tech industry employs a lot of people in the Bay Area.
Cut to, you saying something like, “Yeah well not all techies are as stupid as you realtors think.”
I for one don’t think tech people are stupid. Quite the opposite. I also don’t happen to think that buying real estate in SF is stupid.
You obviously do think that.
We’re not seeing eye to eye, and it’s worse when you skip a few things that you probably ought to write just because you think them.
So whatever, bud. Poor writing. Crummy attitude. All realtors = this. The SF market is this. Anybody buying in it is this. Blah blah blah. Seen it.
“I also don’t happen to think that buying real estate in SF is stupid.”
I’m not sure I’d use the word “stupid”, but buying during the 2005-8 boom was a bad financial decision. Renting while waiting for lower prices was the smarter way to go. That is easy to say this in retrospect though as you recall there were many posters here reading the writing on the wall as far back as 2005.
buying during the 2005-8 boom was a bad financial decision
That’s a blanket statement. If by saying that, you mean, “buying something for more than you could have gotten the same thing for, and then selling it within a relatively short amount of time” is generally a bad financial decision, in hindsight, then sure. True statement.
If by saying that, you mean, “buying something for more than you could have gotten the same thing for, and then selling it within a relatively short amount of time”
I think you get to “bad financial decision” before you get to the second clause there. Especially if you’re debt-financing.
That’s one way of looking at it. I tend to think, “Did they improve the property? If not, why are they selling so soon? Of course they stand to lose money.” Despite Socketsite CW, a lot of people view property this way. This site is rife with exceptions to each and everything. Let’s not drop blanket statements all the time. Like, “Realtors think tech guys are dumb because one realtor posted a story about Intel’s second quarter.” Agreed?
18 arrested in $10 million mortgage-fraud case
Don’t worry, only one of the defendants has a San Francisco address (and I could only find one trustee deed that matches his name). I’m sure this type of fraudulent activity was limited to the suburbs.
Those arrested included a mortgage broker, eight real estate agents and three former employees of financial institutions, said U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello’s office in San Francisco.
Bubble pops. Crooked professionals exposed.
“The real estate agents are Vangeline Broyles, 46, of Redwood City; Maria Comfort, 46, of Daly City; Jeanie Cusing, 48, of San Mateo; Ginger Daniels, 31, of Oakland; Wilfredo Pascual, 51, of Daly City; Leonora Pomar, 56, of Colma; Gina Tchikovani, 43, of Redwood City; and Roy Cervantes, 31, of Lincoln (Placer County).”
Wonder if any of the agents posted on here…
“Crooked professionals exposed.”
Make that, professional crooks exposed.
Talking about crooks, GS is charged with fraud by the SEC.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/s-e-c-sues-goldman-over-housing-market-deal/?partner=yahoofinance
That was long due. The big RE fraud couldn’t unravel without the smartest bankster player being caught red handed.