San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory: 1/31/11 (www.SocketSite.com)
Inventory of listed single-family homes, condos, and TICs in San Francisco increased 6.9% over the past two weeks to 1,341 active listings. Over the past five years listed inventory levels have increased an average of 5.5% in San Francisco during the same two weeks.
Current listed inventory is up 31% on a year-over-year basis, up 24% versus the average of the past five years, up 67% as compared to 2006. At the same time, listed sales last month appear to have been just over 400, down a few percentage points year-over-year.
The inventory of single-family homes for sale in San Francisco is up 41% on a year-over-year basis to 544 while listed condo inventory is up 25% to 797.
The percentage of all active listings in San Francisco have undergone at least one price reduction dropped two points to 34% while the percentage of active listings that are either already bank owned (90) or seeking a short sale (192) dropped a point to 21%, down 10% on an absolute basis over the past two weeks.
Think “new” listings for previously unsold properties (with respect to the percentage of reductions) and holiday moratoriums (with respect to bank-owned activity).
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).
San Francisco Housing Inventory: Starting 2011 At A Six-Year High [SocketSite]
Will Pent-Up Demand Outstrip Pent-Up Supply? [SocketSite]

66 thoughts on “San Francisco Listed Housing Inventory Update: January 31, 2011”
  1. A couple of things to consider:
    It doesn’t include unlisted inventory or inventory that is about to hit the market (a few phone calls to realtors, developers, painters, stagers and quick scan of county recorder will give you this)
    A discussion about inevntory is moot if you do not also have a discussion about sales. If inventory is up 25% and sales are up 30% or sales are flat it is two different things. It’s like saying Buster Posey went to Bat 500 times this year as opposed to 250 times last year, and not talking about how many hits he got.
    The market is much better than it was last year, I’ll try to find some time and right something up later if you want me to. Of coarse, I’m a little skewed because I am mostly SoMa South Beach, and my activity has really picked up in the last 50 days. The other brokers I have talked to had similar experiences.
    [Editor’s Note: As written above:

    Current listed inventory is up 31% on a year-over-year basis, up 24% versus the average of the past five years, up 67% as compared to 2006. At the same time, listed sales last month appear to have been just over 400, down a few percentage points year-over-year.

    We expect to see similar results with respect to sales in January in terms of year-over-year results (plus or minus a few points). And keep in mind our inventory figure is net of new sales not simply “new listings” (i.e., existing inventory + new listings – sales and withdrawn).
    In terms of unlisted inventory, call it roughly 800 units in new developments and elsewhere about town at the moment. As usual, all you had to do was plug in.]

  2. I’m sure some of you are going to try and read a lot into this data point, but let me tell you: this data is all just a bunch of uncorrelated, wiggly lines.

  3. yes, Jimmy, and when the black wiggly line and the light green wiggly line converge… Mubarak will step down.
    Oh, wait…

  4. Inventory is important and higher inventory is generally going to result in downward pressure on sale prices. I’m more interested in the actual sales personally. So long as people are buying we have a healthy market for real estate. +/- a few points / sales MoM or YoY is negligible so long as buyers and sellers are finding common ground to make deals. Bears and Bulls will have their opinions on the extent of a recovery or the depth of the next double dip, but these data points don’t really provide a strong argument for either side. That said, I do believe that there is more here than just a random set of squiggly lines. Looking forward to EGGuy’s pent up supply figures. This is also a good stat.

  5. I will print out these graphs and take them to Pac Heights and Noe Valley and show them to sellers; they will sell me a house cheap.
    If they balk, I will explain to them the things I have learned from bears about “mix” and the real meaning of medians. I will tell them that there are lots of houses for sale that aren’t even listed.
    Maybe I can even get a house for free. With a view!
    [Editor’s Note: Not exactly free, but would you settle for $868,500 less than four years ago? Or perhaps $250,000 less (at asking) than in 2006?]

  6. “The market is much better than it was last year”.
    That depends on your point of view. Two years ago, Paul also mentioned rapidly increasing sales at Infinity. But real estate agents are masters at telling one side of the story and in that situation, what Paul “forgot” to mention was that Infinity had dramatically slashed their prices, pressuring prices all over the city.
    So lets look at one of Paul’s recent sales and see why the sales are increasing. Look at Metropolitan #2101. It was my favorite one of Paul’s listings. It’s been on the market for about two years.
    The seller finally got tired of paying for a property he no longer wanted and so he dropped the price. As I recall, it was originally listed for something like 1.4. The seller finally got serious about selling it and dropped the price more and more and more and finally sold it for 1.05. I don’t remember exactly, but I think the seller paid about 1.3 based on the tax assessment.
    So the reason sales have increased is primarily on the seller side. They are getting tired of holding, they see the inventory building and they will soon start to see too many foreclosures getting sold for them to hold out any hope of getting their price.
    From the listing: “New Pricing = The best deal ever at the Metropolitan!” And that’s the only reason it finally sold.
    http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/355-1st-St-94105/unit-2101/home/878455
    And for those of you tracking zillow thinking your home value has increased or not gone down very much, zillow lists the estimate for this one at 1.264.
    Unwarranted in law thinks he’s being funny, but the real estate agents beat sellers over the head with these graphs. None of us have to. All we have to do is wait until the sellers realize that the bubble is over and they missed it. And like Paul’s listing above, they get tired of paying for a property they don;t really want. Unwarrantedinlaw, Paul’s listing DID have a view. A nice one at that.

  7. unwarrantedinlaw,
    Very funny.
    A bit too “2007 rebuttal” though. SF will always be more expensive than the rest, everyone knows that, but saying prices will always be at the current level is a bit short-sighted. If prices take another 20% in 2 years, what will you say to today’s buyers?
    A market is a moving thing. Who would have guessed in 2008 that we’d see 20%+ losses from peak on prime SF?
    I believe we are at or close to the real bottom (March 2009 was a fake). I think very decent deals are and will be happening between now and 2013.

  8. YEWBA, do ya think 30% off the 2005 price is a bloodbath?
    Think of how smug the owner of this place was when he bought at 1.275 “before the big runup”. Now for sale at $899K. But see, like I said, the owner finally dropped to something close to reasonable and so this place will sell and Paul will be sure to tell us the Met is hot, hot, hot. But only at a $425,000 loss for the owner. That’s a lot of stickers.
    http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/355-1st-St-94105/unit-2405/home/987776
    Note it’s been listed for 3.5 years. Obviously the owner wasn’t serious, but they see prices absolutely collapsing around him and suddenly he gets religion. That’s what happened in 2009 and that is exactly what’s happening now.

  9. If prices take another 20% in 2 years, what will you say to today’s buyers?
    This is really the question. Will we see a 2011 Apple in 24 months (i.e., sometime in 2013 or thereafter) showing a “further” 20% decline. I’m excluding some of these new properties that are trading at near peak pricing. I’m not sure those new flips we’re seeing today can hold their value in this market (e.g., 1813 Greenwich), although I do think they signal market strength more than weakness. But I have serious doubts about the double dip. Do I think we’re in a declining market, yes. But I am skeptical that we’re going to see a 2x dip.
    Who would have guessed in 2008 that we’d see 20%+ losses from peak on prime SF?
    Actually, I think a lot of people here on SS thought this was a very real possibility. Myself included.

  10. “Actually, I think a lot of people here on SS thought this was a very real possibility. Myself included.”
    I agree with eddy. 2008 for me is the year I didn’t buy a spec. house. Fixer prices were just too high.

  11. I don’t think 2011 purchases are going to fall another 20% on lower end homes/neighborhoods, where they are already down around 40% from peak. But there are a lot of distressed sales to clear out, so even these should continue to fall by some percentage. From this point, I think the bigger declines will be at the mid- and higher-end homes that are only down around 20% from peak and have much more room to fall – this is where declines have been accelerating of late, and I can see another 20% down easily there, particularly if interest rates climb at all.

  12. eddy,
    True, that was a rhetorical question, just to say that everyone was baffled at how prices managed to still peak in 2008 in prime SF. It took a lot of faith (and logic) to claim price declines. Kudos to the 2008 bears.

  13. In my opinion, as the #1 Resale Agent in South Beach for 2011 according to MLS, my experinece has been that the market is superior for Jan 2011 than Jan 2010 in both transaction volume and equivalent sales price (i.e Infinity). Period. End of sentence.

  14. Paul, what do you mean by “equivalent sales price”?
    Rather than “Period. End of sentence.” which makes no sense, please give us hard numbers rather than spin, like the editor did.

  15. Don’t bother asking the spinmaster for any real data, sfrenegade. But if I had to read between the lines, I would guess he’s suggesting that prices at Infinity have gone up over the past year. I haven’t followed that building closely, but there are a handful of flips listed there today. 7D at 333 Main, for example, is listed for $639K, and was purchased last April for $560K per PropertyShark. So looks like asking prices are up…but I don’t know what’s actually sold there recently, though.

  16. Paul, as you know, January is not really a good month to judge real estate transactions/trends and 2010 was a horrible year.

  17. @AT, I think somewhere between -25 to -35 off peak is about the norm we’re going to see. These are real losses in the market and I do agree that homes that haven’t realized such value destruction face this Reality (pun intended). The questions is whether we’re going to see another -25% to -35 percent dip from today. There are a lot of 2005 to 2009 homes with varying amounts of fat to trim as we’ll be seeing these homes face reality for several years.
    @lol, sorry for not picking up on your rhetorical. It wasn’t so hard to predict, but if you were in the market for a home during those years it was hard, very hard to not get caught up in the hype. But the math was pretty obvious and the price levels to incomes were just not sustainable. The elimination of the 20% down payment and the funny stuff with the crazy loans were just too much for any rational investor to stomach.
    The reality is that most if not all of those funny money games are over. And buyers in the market today are stepping up to the table with traditional loans. This is why the sub $1M market is going to rule for the foreseeable future. But the $1M+ market is still healthy and definitely not dead as many are trying to argue. This makes the bear / double dip argument very hard to win convincingly. But I understand the argument.

  18. eddy, I don’t disagree. I don’t think we’re going to see another -25% to -35 percent dip from today. I think we could see 5-10% more off those that have really been sacked with 40% declines off peak. But I think it will be deeper than that on the higher end. Look at this chart of the distribution of sales in SF:
    http://www.sfhomeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Sales-by-Price-Range.jpg
    Not that many sales in the $1mm+ range, really. Of course some of those under $1mm sales were over that threshold a few years ago. Regardless, just a little bump in supply (distressed sales, incomes) and there just aren’t enough buyers and prices fall. We’re seeing it. The question is just how long and how deep it will continue.

  19. “This makes the bear / double dip argument very hard to win convincingly. But I understand the argument.”
    Rather then a double-dip, it could be characterized as a dip-and-blip. i.e. The government stimulus clearly succeeded in temporarily arresting the downward slide. On an absolute scale, the temporary effects of the stimulus have been erased. The real question going forward is whether the previous slide will resume or if the stimulus caused the market to turn the corner.

  20. @AT, we’re on the same page. I think that 5-10% decline could take 2-7 years though. Interest rates, as you mentioned earlier, are the real key.
    @tc_sf, good points. But there are so many variables constantly moving. Very tricky decisions if you are a buyer or a casual seller.

  21. @AT again, I’d have to see that chart on sales over $1M for a few years as I don’t think we’ve ever seen massive #’s in those tiers. But it’s a great chart!

  22. The market has been stairstepping down as it picks up a new crop of buyers. So you have buyers dry up in 2009 and then the government gave them a very nice 3 year analysis and some new buyers stepped in.
    Then the markets pause and drop until you can pick up a sufficient group of additional buyers. So now we’re approaching the “I’ll buy if the rent vs buy works out to pretty close” crowd, who ignore the loss in the downpayment issue. That’s what we’re going to pick up this year. As a result, rents will fall some and then next year will be cheaper sale prices still to keep the analysis around even.
    If the economy picks back up in two years (doubtful, but that’s a long way off), the declines will no doubt slow. If not, prices have to fall again. The next group of buyers will then be the rental investors. Rent vs buy only works out now because of the tax breaks. The investors have to get cash flow positive AND believe prices won’t stay down over their hold period. So that means lower prices still.
    First the dumb money will come in like it did in Florida and Arizona, but prices continue to fall because the dumb money doesn’t think about vacancies and repairs and the cost of management. So prices fall again until cash flow positive includes everything. That increases the number of rentals, so rents fall and the cycle repeats.
    So 20%? At least

  23. BTW, my friends who have not made a single mortgage payment since 2008 still have that home. It’s their second home. A forced sale is probably 4-6 months away. They stopped paying at the start of the financial crisis and nothing, no effect at all.
    They aren’t even at the head of the foreclosure queue. Everyone behind them will come up later.
    That’s a LOT of foreclosures.
    There are a number of buildings where so many people are underwater that basically there is little to no inventory until the foreclosures start en masse. I’m sure that causes some anomalies and that makes for fun stories by realtors. The reality is that when the foreclosures hit those buildings, gravity will hit them like everywhere else.

  24. sfrenegade,
    I did include a hard number example, but the editor chose to selectively edit my post and did not include it.
    [Editor’s Note: We did remove two “tit for tat” comments (the second of which happened to be Paul’s). And while we’re all for hard numbers and data points, let’s try to avoid the comment spam masquerading as such. Cheers.]

  25. tipster,
    Yeah s2101 is a great unit and a great price.
    Prices are starting to move up. Infinity is an example, recently I listed and sold a studio on the 6th floor (318 spear 6G) for $475k, last year I represented a buyer and got one for less than $400K net. Also I just listed and sold a 1 br on the 4th floor facing the courtyard (338 spear 4J) for $668500.
    Activity at open house has increased significantly, and I am currently double digits in escrows. Volume and pricing are higher for Jan 2011 than Jan 2010. I normally do not make these kind of statements, but definitely feel like it is similar to 1998.

  26. A new SF bubble->current record?
    http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1691-Palou-Ave-94124/home/1613921
    $750k in 2007. $225k in 2011. Down 70%. Take that Modesto! And a nice round trip as the 2011 price is exactly the Feb. 1999 price. And this part of the Bayview is fine. We have one friend literally a block away on the same street and another within 3 blocks on Bridgeview.
    Of course, since it took $750k to buy a 3/1 in the Bayview in 2007, surely a Bernal place was worth $900k. and since a Bernal place took $900k, surely a Potrero Hill place was worth $1.2mm. And then surely Noe was worth $1.5mm. It is all a continuum and an interconnected market. Drop the price in one area and the others follow accordingly although the precise degree of the decline is not necessarily 1:1.
    I don;t think these areas that have been slammed 40% (or much more) will see huge declines from here. But the other parts of that interconnected market still have a ways to fall to reach equilibrium (and it always does).

  27. Your comment was clear Paul, my point was that Jan. is normally a very slow month to judge trends in RE (normally after the Super Bowl = more activity – right?) and that 2010 was a horrible year, so, I would hope, that sales numbers would be better this year. That said, I have been looking for a SFR in Dist. 7/8 and parts of 1 (Lake/Laurel Village) for a very long term hold. There is not much inventory at all. Hopefully after the SB more will become available.

  28. “That said, I have been looking for a SFR in Dist. 7/8 and parts of 1 (Lake/Laurel Village) for a very long term hold. There is not much inventory at all. Hopefully after the SB more will become available.”
    do not worry ppc, as tippy and a.t. have constantly told us there is a bloodbath coming and as goes palou so goes d7.
    “But the other parts of that interconnected market still have a ways to fall to reach equilibrium (and it always does).” see there, he is pretty much guaranteeing that it will happen.
    who are you going to believe?

  29. paco/anonee, so what is your prediction for D7 or “real SF” for the next couple years? Double digit increases? Flat? Down? By how much?
    Or are you just going to use the fluj playbook and mock others without adding anything?

  30. i can’t answer for paco but,20%off peak is a reasonable number after such a huge run up. some people overpaid wildly so their results will differ. people in “expensive suits and furs” will be crowding the market…lol

  31. This was adding something? “since it took $750k to buy a 3/1 in the Bayview in 2007, surely a Bernal place was worth $900k. and since a Bernal place took $900k, surely a Potrero Hill place was worth $1.2mm. And then surely Noe was worth $1.5mm. ” More like hot air and nothing more. The Bayview thing has been going on for years. Any house of that size gets ~900K in Bernal right now. Any house of any size that’s decent gets over 1.2M in Potrero. Noe 1.2 to 1.8 is doing grea. Between that sort of made up stuff you say, and how Tipster’s fantasy of how has a friend who did this that or the other thing everywhere? Versus my illumination of what actually took place in these “apples” that the ed. didn’t initially research fully? Or my constant insertion of actual sales data? Which you and your pals argue against, with futility? please, sonny. Know a thing once in a while. Then talk about it.

  32. Looking around in south beach, there does appear to be a fair amount of units pending.
    Some examples (and their last listing prices before they went contingent):
    88 King #1319 listed for nearly $400,000 off its 2005 price
    310 Townsend #202 listed for 46% off its last purchase price.
    310 Townsend #309 listed for 39% off purchase price
    201 Harrison #1028 listed for under its 2002 price.
    201 Harrison #508 listed for more than 30% off purchase.
    301 Main T14 (infinty) short sale
    199 New Montgomery #1510 listed more than $100K off its 2005 price.
    199 New Montgomery #1508 listed nearly $200K off its 2005 price.
    400 Beale #804 (Paul’s listing) $90K off its 2005 price
    400 Beale #1413 $125K off its 2005 price
    South of Market looks smoking hot to me.
    And D7? Look at the pendings there:
    3835 Scott Street #202 (a BMR unit) listed for 52% off.
    129 Pixley listed for 34% off purchase.
    2052 Green Street listed for more than $300,000 off its last purchase.
    A real barn burner.
    The last time Paul went off about how hot the market was, it was when Infinity sales office dropped prices by as much as 30% as I recall. He kept telling us how hot, hot hot the market was but “forgot” to tell us prices were sinking like a rock. The posts were deleted but someone quoted him here:
    https://socketsite.com/archives/2009/04/a_response_from_michael_kriozere_orh_were_planning_on_p.html

  33. It is worth keeping valuation metrics such as price/rent and price/income in mind to avoid “anchoring” on boom time pricing and then looking at “decline from peak”.
    @PPC — In general, there tends to be fewer housing units in upper price tiers then in lower tiers. Widespread downsizing might be expected to cause vacancies as the number of people dropping into a lower tier is smaller then the number falling in from above. Think of a pyramid cut into slices where the area of the top of each slice is smaller then the area on the bottom. The opposite effect can obviously cause sharp price increases and tight supply during boom times.

  34. Thanks tc_sf, I agree 100%, plus the fact that there aren’t that many SFRs in those districts (7/8) in the first place (supply/demand). There are a few available, but on landfill in the Marina, on extremely busy streets (Gough/ Divis.), need a lot of work (expensive = the Pacific Heights premium – my sister in law’s term – she lives there), normally, all the above. I will wait and see, since it will be a extremely long term residence…I hope. Thanks again.

  35. Pent up supply appears to be holding steady over the past couple of weeks. Currently, 1580 homes are in some state of foreclosure (NODs, NOTS, bank owned) in Ess Eff. This is compared to 1574 homes two weeks ago. Standard disclosures about noise in the data; information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
    [Editor’s Note: In terms of true “pent-up” supply, both pre-foreclosure and scheduled auction activity have increased around 3 percent over the past two weeks in San Francisco. At the same time, already bank-owned inventory has fallen (think holiday disruption of the foreclosure pipeline) resulting in what might look like a push over the past few weeks.]

  36. The main thing to focus on should be foreclosure activity. It is what will drive prices down dramatically. I just reached agreement today to purchase a 3/2 sfr up in the sierras at 25% what the next door neighbor paid in 2005 (identical house built by same develop using same blue prints on fairly equivalent parcel), its 53% under what the previous (foreclosed) owner paid in 2002. In the area the foreclosures have completely taken over the low end of the market.
    I doubt things will get that bloody here in SF though. Perhaps SF can hold out long enough that the rest of the country will find a bottom to the market and start improving. I think one thing SF has going for it is that so much of the housing stock in this city is rental housing that rarely changes hands (now that the lembi’s aren’t buying up everything in sight).
    At 1341 units listed for sale that represents housing for like 2700 people in a city of 700,000 or so. While it is enough inventory to put some downward pressure on prices, its nothing like what is being seen in the places where foreclosures/short sales dominate the market.

  37. “At 1341 units listed for sale that represents housing for like 2700 people in a city of 700,000 or so.”
    1341 units is more than 30% of the houses sold in 2010 that are on MLS. That’s a pretty large number, since the market is set by sales.

  38. When you say “credits,” do you mean incentives from the sales office, e.g. HOA paid for 2 years, things like that? What unit number was it?

  39. It’s a waste of time to go on a wild goose chase every time a realtor is vague or misleading.
    It’s more effective to just not trust someone like that. There are plenty of more reliable sources of information.

  40. I thought January ’11 looked better than January ’10 so I looked into it. Per the MLS, [2011] saw 266 sales (so far) avg $523 psqft. [2010] saw 240 sales at $519 psqft.

  41. And interestingly, District 10 had 10 more sales in 1/11, 47, than last year 1/10, 37. And last year they were averaging $340 psqft versus this year’s $324. Every single property reported square footage count, except one.

  42. Redfin shows ppsft DOWN from $560 to $520 and sinking like a rock. Interesting indeed.
    # sold down a touch, but note that last year, the initial tax credits expired in November: anyone who was going to buy in the next few months bought by November, so January 10 was relatively empty. We’re DOWN from that low number. DOWN hard.
    Scroll down and find the graph and then click on the right most check box above the graph to see the number sold in this link.
    http://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco

  43. No, I won’t. I am tired of you misrepresenting links. Sight unseen I am sure that’s wrong, one, so I won’t bother. And Redfin’s mistakes are documented daily, two. I’ll stick with the MLS and your second stanza was opinonspin that contrasts with December’s decent YoY numbers.

  44. “Redfin shows ppsft DOWN from $560 to $520 and sinking like a rock.”
    “I’ll stick with the MLS”
    Of course YOU will, but the rest of us understand it’s just a set of stats to use to mislead buyers and so we ignore it.

  45. I am not sure why you consider yourself a part of a community. Even among the like-minded on here, you take it all much further. Why you think people might be interested in debating a spin you make on a link is pretty laughable at this late stage. I’ve wasted plenty of time clicking on things you lied about. So have lots of others. Even if you, miracle of miracles, played this one straight Redfin’s methodology is a known factor.

  46. I’ve certainly seen Redfin list different prices according to Public Records vs MLS. (And people have pointed this out on this blog)
    My assumption though was that since the numbers on the public record are used for tax purposes, it would literally be a crime to misreport sale prices to the public record. My impression is that there is much wider latitude for what is reported to the MLS.

  47. “My impression is that there is much wider latitude for what is reported to the MLS.”
    Yes, that is true. I pointed out 263 Filbert earlier, which got reported to MLS as $859K, but reported to public records as $800K. Someone was trying to say that it sold at asking, when it didn’t.

  48. To be fair, it probably counts as a “big profit” for what looks like a 2006 apple, but the actual dollar amount was underwhelming based on the claim.

  49. That was ostensibly your opinion when you said it the first time, grownup. Now of course, generally you might have been throwing up a link anybody can see on SFGate or any other homepage and lying about it. Or you could have done a quick Google, to throw up a link to a neighborhood association or some other data without reading it, and then lying about what it contains. Either way I wouldn’t know. Your goodwill credit is long gone. And I’m done looking into what you say in any way. But I do assume you’re actually trying to win arguments at any rate. So your 12:23 comment was just you repeating yourself.

  50. “1341 units is more than 30% of the houses sold in 2010 that are on MLS. That’s a pretty large number, since the market is set by sales.”
    Wait if the market is set by sales then what does it matter how many places are listed? You make it seem like demand is irrelevant, it just matters how many places are for sale and how many places sold (supply equals 30% of places sold last year). I don’t think the population compared to how many places are for sale is irrelavent (I personally think population effects demand). Would demand for housing change if tomorrow half the people in SF left town or if another 800,000 showed up looking for a place to live? According to you no, because 1341 places for sale is 30% of how many places sold last year, the fact that the population just doubled or shrank would be irrelavent cause the “market is set by sales”.
    I was just noting that the number of places available for sale in SF is small compared to our population. One big factor in that is so many places are rental units providing a nice steady income into someone’s pocket, so the percentage of places actually trading hands is relatively small. Do you agree or disagree that if our population doubled or halfed in the next month that it would effect housing prices? Personally I do think number of places for sale versus the population size is going to have some effect on the supply versus demand equation.

  51. Rillion, housing prices are set by transactions, but you are muddling quite a few concepts in your response and not quite understanding what I said. I don’t disagree that if our population doubled or halved that it would affect housing prices by affecting demand. In fact, I just said that yesterday on another thread, but you didn’t say that in your 4:06 post.
    You are talking about the relative value in your 1:00PM response today, vs. talking about the absolute value in your 4:06 post yesterday. It is completely irrelevant to say: “At 1341 units listed for sale that represents housing for like 2700 people in a city of 700,000 or so” unless you are comparing it to when the city had 800,000 people to say that supply is lower or unless you are able to say that at any given time 5000 people in the city are looking to buy a house so demand is high. Inventory per population is not useful in determining supply and demand without more information.
    In contrast, I am saying that current supply is 30% of annual demand.

  52. Sfrenegade – probably muddled because I had just been comparing the SF market to one of the counties up in the sierras where there are 242 places for sale in a county with a population of 36,000 and where BEFORE the r/e bubble burst 50% of properties were owner occupied, 20% rental properties and 30% were owned but not occupied by full time residents. Up there in the mountains prices are such that I bought a place for 25% of its 2005 comp.
    Just pointing out what I believed was one of those factors, that very few of the places in SF change hands or are on the market relative to our population.

  53. Note that looking at supply vs sales rate as sfrenegade did is basically a reformulation of “months of supply”. Which is a commonly used and accepted market metric, although just one of many possible measures.
    Looking at supply vs available market may have value, but also note that the SF median HH income is ~$70k, so right there 1/2 the population is not really “pent up demand” for housing at current prices and loan standards.

  54. SF median HH income is ~$70k, so right there 1/2 the population is not really “pent up demand” for housing at current prices and loan standards.
    True, but there are 60% of renters in SF and around the same # of units locked in rentals. A lot of the renters fall into the bottom 1/2 income-wise and are not moving.
    Add to that the myriad prop-13 low-taxed families that are not going anywhere neither. This market is triggered by the actions of a few on a limited housing turnover. Liberate the market (from rental laws/prop 13) and you’ll see a very different animal. But for the foreseeable future, that’s all we have to play with.

  55. “True, but there are 60% of renters in SF and around the same # of units locked in rentals. A lot of the renters fall into the bottom 1/2 income-wise and are not moving.”
    Rillion was attempting to make some comparison between listed supply and market for that supply. While I think there could be some value in looking at this ratio, I don’t think that considering the total population of SF as an available market is correct.
    If you are selling $200k cars, then your total available market is not the US population, but rather the much smaller group that can afford $200k cars.

  56. The market is even narrower. Not everyone who can afford a $200K car would consider buying one.

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