Faster and Higher

by | May 21, 2013 | Actives/Pendings, Average DOM, Frenzy, Market Conditions, North County Coastal | 1 comment

Realtors including myself say that we have “low inventory”, but it’s not because fewer sellers are listing – it’s because the heavy demand is gobbling them up faster, and at higher prices:

NSDCC Listings and Sales between Jan 1 and May 15

Year
Total Listings
Sales
Avg $$/sf
Avg DOM
2009
2,163
596
$399/sf
71
2010
2,167
837
$380/sf
73
2011
2,266
891
$374/sf
82
2012
1,910
991
$374/sf
84
2013
2,057
1,118
$405/sf
49

The sales amounted to only a quarter of the total listings in 2009, and this year they are half!

We know that the higher-end market is sluggish at best (there are 713 active listings over $1M). Here’s a look at the UNDER-$1,000,000 markets:

NSDCC UNDER-$1,000,000 – Actives and Pendings/Contingents

City or Area
#Actives
#Pend/Cont
Carlsbad
115
186
Carmel Vly
28
51
Del Mar/SB
6
11
Encinitas
19
59
La Jolla
10
9
RSF
1
3
Totals
179
319

On the street, it feels like the frenzy is slowing.  But until the ACT/PEND ratios get closer to a more normal 2:1 (or at least 1:1), the UNDER-$1,000,000 market will continue to be very competitive.

The lowball season usually starts in June, but there are only 23 active listings under $1,000,000 that have been listed for more than 60 days (out of 184)!

Under $1 Million Is Red Hot

by | Feb 12, 2013 | Actives/Pendings, Frenzy, Market Buzz, Market Conditions | 3 comments

An update on the Actives/Pendings report – does anyone remember when it was called the Jim Ratio? One day fellow realtor Peter B. agreed with me that a 2:1 ratio of active listings to pendings were a normal market, and boom, the Jim Ratio was born.

The Under-$1,000,000 market is scorching, with more pendings than active listings in every area!  The Over-$1,000,000 market is fairly healthy looking too, and better than it’s been has since we’ve kept track.

Detached-Home Listings UNDER $1,000,000

Town or Area Actives Pend/Cont A/P Ratio
Carmel Vly
16
42
0.38
Encinitas
17
44
0.39
Carlsbad
92
179
0.51
LJ/DM/RSF/SB
24
31
0.77
Totals
149
298
0.50

Detached-Home Listings OVER $1,000,000

Town or Area Actives Pend/Cont A/P Ratio
Carmel Vly
50
29
1.72
Encinitas
58
30
1.93
Carlsbad
47
19
2.47
LJ/DM/RSF/SB
383
92
4.16
Totals
538
170
3.16

Contingents make up 18% of the total Pend/Cont count, and are as good as pending these days when buyers who have been hanging on for months might reap a windfall of sudden appreciation. It is a feeding frenzy!

Temperature Gauge – Hot!

by | Jan 26, 2013 | Actives/Pendings, North County Coastal, Sales and Price Check | 8 comments

The lower-end looks like it is picking up speed, and those selling above $1,000,000 shouldn’t feel bad either.  Here are the active, contingent+pending, and sold listings for each area – the monthly sold count is the last six months of sales divided by 6.

Under-$1,000,000 Market

Town or Area Actives Cont+Pend Avg1Mo Sales Months’ of Inventory
Encinitas
14
52
25.3
0.55
Carmel Vly
17
33
24.5
0.69
Carlsbad
103
159
92.8
1.11
Del Mar/SB
14
14
7.3
1.92
La Jolla
14
12
6
2.33
RSF
0
3
8
0
Totals
163
273
157.3
1.04

Over-$1,000,000 Market

Town or Area Actives Cont+Pend Avg1Mo Sales Months’ of Inventory
Carlsbad
38
14
12
3.17
Carmel Vly
47
24
14.7
3.20
Encinitas
61
25
14.3
4.27
Del Mar/SB
68
21
15.2
4.47
La Jolla
109
39
21.3
5.12
RSF
185
30
18.8
9.84
Totals
508
153
96.3
5.28

The Over-$1,000,000 numbers are historically terrific, and sellers everywhere except in RSF should be jumping for joy.  The Under-$1,000,000 market, with only one-months’ worth of inventory and 1.67 times as many pendings as actives, is out of control and cooking!

When is the best time to sell?  When everyone else isn’t!

Actives/Pendings

by | Jan 19, 2013 | Actives/Pendings, Market Buzz

We’ve compared active listings to pendings, and have seen how a 2:1 ratio is where a market seems healthy and balanced. Here are the active vs. contingent/pending listings of detached-homes:

Region/Area ACT listings C+P listings Ratio
NSDCC South
664
398
2.95:1
NSDCC North
209
244
0.86:1
SD County
3,086
4,435
0.70:1

The lower-end is cooking, and sellers are enjoying parades of shoppers during the first week of being on the market. Is it healthy and balanced to have more pendings than actives? Sellers think so!

Sizzling Lower-End

by | Oct 25, 2012 | Actives/Pendings, How Hot?, North County Coastal

While the whole NSDCC market feels like it is cooking, the inventory shortage and resulting dash to tie up properties is restricted to the lower end of each area.

We’ve considered a 2:1 ratio of active listings to pendings to be a fairly normal market, and the higher-end of local markets are in that range – or worse.  But the lower-ends have been scorching hot:

Detached-Home Listings, Under/Over $1,000,000

Town or Area Zip Code Under $1M Actives/Pend+Cont Over $1M Actives/Pend+Cont
SE Carlsbad 92009
51/113
30/9
SW Carlsbad 92011
37/47
14/8
Encinitas 92024
38/57
71/29
Carmel Vly 92130
22/44
57/27
Total AllAbove
148/261
172/73

It supports the notion that there isn’t much move-up buying, at least not up into our higher-end regions. Most sellers fall into three categories: those leaving the county, estates that are liquidating, and the exhausted over-encumbered folks. It is similar in the ultra-high end markets too:

Detached-Home Listings, Under/Over $2,000,000

Town or Area Zip Code Under $2M Actives/Pend+Cont Over $2M Actives/Pend+Cont
RSF 67+91
39/25
167/11
DelMar/SB 14+75
52/43
49/8
La Jolla 92037
68/40
86/19
Total AllAbove
159/108
302/38

The contingents make up about 25% of the Pend+Cont totals, and would make those categories appear slightly bloated, but the short-sales are more likely to close now than ever – because buyers are willing to hang around longer.

Want to purchase a house around North SD County’s coastal region for less than $1,000,000? You can expect a very challenging competition for the good buys. Want to spend more than $2,000,000? You’re in the driver’s seat!

Inventory Change By Tier

by | Oct 17, 2012 | Actives/Pendings, Inventory, Thinking of Buying?, Thinking of Selling?

From Zillow:  The inventory of lower-priced homes for sale, which are commonly sought by first-time homebuyers, has dropped by more than 40 percent in California over the past year, according to a new Zillow analysis, which tracks changes in the number of homes listed for sale on Zillow across the country as of Sept. 30, 2012 and compares inventory changes in the bottom, middle and upper tiers of home prices.

“First-time homebuyers are being squeezed out of the market by falling inventory and the rapid influx of investors looking to buy basic homes to rent out to the growing population of people who have recently been foreclosed upon,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow chief economist. “Investors are paying in cash and can close sooner, which is more favorable to banks and homeowners looking to sell.”

Nationally, inventory rates have dropped by one-fifth (-19.4 percent) across all homes with inventory declining the most in higher-priced homes (-22 percent).

In the largest 30 metro areas, inventory across all tiers has fallen the most in the Sacramento (-42.4 percent), San Francisco, (-42.4 percent) and San Diego (-40.7 percent) metros; and has fallen the least in the Cincinnati (-9.5 percent), Portland, Ore. (-10.8 percent) and St. Louis, Mo. (-14.5 percent) areas.

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While these percentages seem shocking, this isn’t bad news – it’s a sign of an active, productive marketplace. There has been a similar supply of homes for sale, they are just selling faster.  The overall counts look fairly subtle too:

Total Number of MLS Listings, Jan 1st to Oct. 15th

2011 – 57,800

2012 – 52,300  -10%

Total Number of Det. & Att. Listings Sold, Jan 1st to Oct. 15th

2011 – 25,994

2012 – 28,847  +11%

Housing Tracker shows that the active inventory is at all-time lows – but they include the contingents:

Compare these counts for San Diego County, and how things have changed since early 2009 when the market first started to pick up:

SD County Det. & Att Actives Cont & Pend Ratio
Sept. 2008
11,741
4,082
2.88
Oct. 2009
6,630
6,482
1.02
Oct. 2012
5,607
9,157
0.61

What a difference since 2008! Plus we saw that half of the listings are going contingent/pending within the first 2-4 weeks too. It’s a hyper-fast, efficient market, if you can just get the price right.

Actives/Pendings

by | Jun 26, 2012 | Actives/Pendings | 3 comments

You can see the hot spots around our area from comparing the actives to pendings. We have seen in the past that a 2:1 actives-to-pendings ratio is a good barometer to indicate a ‘healthy’ marketplace.

With short sales being approved faster and buyers hanging on, I’ve included the contingent listings with the pendings. Here is how the detached-listing counts break down:

Area or Zip Code ACT C+P Ratio (X:1)
Csbd 92009 115 136 0.84
Csbd 92011 63 64 1.00
Ency 92024 131 97 1.35
RSF/DM/SB 371 78 4.76
San Elijo Hills 27 62 0.43
S-luz 92127 117 147 0.80
CV 92130 138 97 1.42

To see every area except the ultra-highenders be well under the 2:1 ratio is remarkable.

Healthy, Steady Housing Market

by | Nov 20, 2011 | Actives/Pendings, Inventory, Market Conditions, North County Coastal, Sales and Price Check | 11 comments

When I say, “the inventory is thin”, it really means that the demand for good-looking-properties-that-are-priced-reasonably is healthy.  While that would seem obvious in any market, it is worth repeating when all you hear is how bad the real estate market is from the mainstream media. 

We have also seen that there is a relationship between inventory and sales/pricing. 

When there are fewer houses on the market, buyers feel pressed to gobble up the ones that are available – and end up paying whatever it takes.  Flash back to 2003 to remember the max-frenzy conditions!

Here are the comparisons of the total number of detached listings/number of solds between January 1st and October 31st in North SD County Coastal (La Jolla to Carlsbad).  There isn’t a direct connection between them – some sold this year were listed last year – but the TL/S-ratio trend is worth watching:

Year Total Listings Solds TL/S Ratio
1999
4,807
2,762
1.74
2000
4,410
2,787
1.58
2001
5,291
2,514
2.10
2002
5,373
3,139
1.71
2003
4,753
3,299
1.44
2004
4,698
2,891
1.63
2005
4,935
2,593
1.90
2006
5,496
2,204
2.49
2007
4,829
2,180
2.22
2008
4,687
1,799
2.61
2009
4,521
1,791
2.52
2010
4,717
2,072
2.28
2011
4,460
2,162
2.06

This year we’ve had the fewest listings since 2000, and more sales since 2007, the height of easy financing. Yet the balance feels relatively healthy, and like the old Jim Ratio of actives-to-pendings, I think we can say that a 2.0 TL/S-ratio is about right.

(For those with MLS access who are checking, because Sandicor deletes withdrawn listings from previous years, I deleted them from all years – there were only 211 this year. The expireds and cancelled listings are included.)

While it feels like there are very few good deals available, does it mean that there has been pressure on pricing lately?  Let’s compare detached sales and pricing in the same January 1st-to-October 31st period of this year, to last year:

Town or Area Zip Code Sales 2010/2011 Avg $/sf 2010/2011
Cardiff 92007
55/73
$483/$469
Carlsbad NW 92008
112/137
$324/$313
Carlsbad SE 92009
446/429
$269/$253
Carlsbad NE 92010
80/123
$260/$238
Carlsbad SW 92011
173/155
$295/$292
Del Mar 92014
78/137
$619/$680
Encinitas 92024
328/305
$356/$352
La Jolla 92037
214/228
$630/$595
RSF 67+91
161/171
$433/$432
Solana Bch 92075
73/57
$538/$560
Carmel Vly 92130
352/348
$342/$330
Total All
2,072/2,162
$378/$378

With the exception of the Del Mar explosion, those numbers look as steady as possible.

Actives/Pendings

by | Jul 11, 2011 | Actives/Pendings | 11 comments

Back in the day when there weren’t loads of short sales, we used to compare the actives to pendings to get a read on the relative ‘health’ of the marketplace. 

With banks pushing harder to close the short sales (though the timelines are still uncertain), and because the buyers who have secured a short sale have hopefully done so at an attractive price making it more likely for them to hang around, let’s add the listings marked ‘contingent’ to the pending category:

Here’s our scorecard, historically, of the ACT/PEND ratio:

0-2 Hot market

3-4 Regular market

5-6 Market in trouble

7-8 Too many choices

9+ Freefall

Town or Area ACT PEND+CONT A/P+C
Carmel Vly 212
69
 3.07
Carlsbad 481
227
 2.12
Del Mar/SolB 201
36
 5.58
Encinitas 189
73
 2.59
La Jolla 265
54
 4.91
RSF 271
36
 7.53
Totals 1,619
495
 4.27

There were days that RSF and La Jolla were 10.0+. Can we call it relatively healthy now?

Pendings Collapse?

by | Jul 1, 2010 | Actives/Pendings, Sales and Price Check, Thinking of Buying? | 4 comments

The NAR Pending Home Sales Index was released today.  They reported a 30% decline in May pendings (vs. April) and it didn’t even garner it’s own post at Calculated Risk, so either nobody cares about what’s coming out of NAR (most likely), or the drop was expected.

The index is a national reading, how are we doing in San Diego County? Here are the detached closed sales for SD County:

Month 2009 2010
April 1,997, $215/sf 1,865, $248/sf
May 1,992, $225/sf 2,150, $252/sf
June 1,949, $227/sf 1,789, $258/sf*
Totals 5,938 5,722

*June, 2010’s number of sales will probably increase 10% or so, due to late-reporters.

Compared to last year, the demand looks steady, even with average square-foot costs up about 10%. The tax credits probably helped, but now that they’re over, can we get a better feel for what’s coming?

Here’s a look at the current detached pendings.

Those from last year have closed, while about half of this year’s numbers are still pending, and subject to fallout (20% to 25%?).  But the 2,392 listings marked ‘contingent’ (short sales) are not included, and should pick up the difference, so I think we can make some decent comparisons. These are detached listings grouped by the month they were marked pending:

SD County Detached Pendings

Month 2009 2010 (# closed already)
April 2,123, $217/sf 2,334, $256/sf (2,019)
May 1,947, $237/sf 1,814, $262/sf (1,039)
June 1,931, $238/sf 1,998, $240/sf (214)
Totals 6,001 6,144

Only 315 of April’s remaining pendings are still eligble for the fed tax credit, and none of these will get state cheese. The local detached market has been resilient!

Once you add in the contingents, this summer’s closings are shaping up to be stronger than last year, without the tax credits, and in the face of unemployment, economy, etc.

The inventory is on the rise though, according to housingtracker.net, which is probably more due to so many over-priced turkeys (OPTs) not selling, than anything else.  Expect that to continue for a couple more weeks before we see the motivated sellers quicken their pace to the exits:

Week of SFH+Condo Inventory 25th %tile Median 75th %tile
2010-06-28 16,501 $249,000 $398,000 $689,900
2010-06-21 15,208 $249,900 $399,000 $699,000
2010-06-14 16,111 $249,000 $395,000 $680,000
2010-06-07 15,190 $248,000 $395,000 $695,000
2010-05-31 15,730 $248,000 $395,000 $690,000

The inventory rise/fall is measuring the list-price accuracy. There are plenty of buyers who would like to take advantage of the sub-5% mortgage rates, and if sellers can live with just a little less, we will have a very productive third quarter (might be a big ‘if’ though).

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