In the Know: December 7, 2015

So, It’s December, Right? 

Details of what 2016’s San Francisco real estate market will look like start to emerge now.             

It’s the first week of the bottom part of the year which means people are distracted away from real estate, right? Well, if you’re the agent at 4 Ord Court over at the base of Corona Heights/Castro (whom we know well) you’d be surprised, which she is. That cute bungalow that’s been updated ever so smartly and cleverly had fifty — 50 — disclosures sent out before her Wednesday offer date. Of course the property, which is a bungalow just shy of 1200 sqft, is one of the most ingenious, thoughtful and efficient properties I’ve seen recently. Even though there are ikea cabinets the charm, thoughtfulness, light and location made it a hit. But it is December and the property was a teaser price. The $1.2M list was only an afterthought for seriously interested buyers. In the end, there were multiple offers but the sellers only wanted to take cash offers of which there were just three. The winning one is in the mid-$1.5M range with a backup in the $1.45M range but the financed offers were even above the winning cash offer of note.

Stay tuned for our Annual Review next issue where we’ll go over what happened in 2015 and how 2016 will be different. Among our top predictions/observations:

1. Price growth will continue but not as fast of an appreciation rate we saw in 2014 and 2015;
2. That said, popular properties will still be, well, popular with multiple bids and over-asking closes;
3. We’ll see greater price accuracy from list price to sale price;
4. Inventory will will be tight for properties that people want but there will be a lot of Grade C and B properties out there as late-comers to the party try to peddle their flipped properties and/or the stream of hastily-built mass projects comes on line (these may be Grade A of course but that depends on your perspective);
5. Escrows will take longer as there are new lending practices in place and because buyers will take their time more than they’ve allowed to have been over the past 2 years; and,
6. Everyone will be waiting to see when the Fed does its second and third rate increases. 

As per usual, here’s what’s in this edition of our newsletter: 

• Stories of the Past Two Weeks: find out what really happened behind the sales you read about for the past week and from the week before. 
• Data of the Week: find out how many homes sold and which sold for most over the list price; 
• (Secret?) Off-Market Listings: see which ones are new this week; and, 
• News Stories of the week

It should go without saying, but it’s worth saying anyway: thank you for reading our newsletter and for your continued patronage, trust and referrals. We love what we do and we love seeing our clients succeed and we’d like to see even more success in the days ahead.