SFResidence is part of the TRI Coldwell Banker office at 1699 Van Ness in San Francisco which is one of the premier offices in the City and has the market share numbers to prove it. We have some of the top agents selling real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a result, our office posts some impressive numbers.

Summer’s almost here and we are not getting the listings we normally do at this time of year. The general feeling is that interest rates might be giving people second thoughts, but we’re not sure why that would be. Generally rising interest rates affects buyers who need to get a loan, not sellers who are putting the house on the market… But the number of listings is still unusually low as we approach summer (which officially starts tomorrow!). Our office manager made the claim today that almost every transaction in our office last week involved multiple offers, mostly because of the lack of inventory. This is good for sellers, but not so good for buyers. So if you are thinking of putting your home on the market, now might be the right time!

Here are the numbers for this week:

6/20/07

• 5 new listings (average price $2,526,200 – low $735,000, high $6,450,000)
• 14 ratified sales (pending) (average price $1,339,714 – low $580,000, high $3,485,000)
• 9 closed sales (sold) (average price $1,674,556 – low $702,000, high $4,000,000)

- Janis Stone

Spring has been hot (market-wise, not weather-wise) and it looks like summer will be even hotter. I can not stress to you how the absence of inventory can cause double-digit appreciation when the few listings we do have sell, and it often creates multiple offer situations.

Every week (tomorrow) on this blog I post the statistics of our TRI Coldwell Banker office on Van Ness which boasts the market share of residential real estate sales for San Francisco. If you are a regular reader, you will see that our pending sales far outpace the number of listings. So even if our agents don’t have the listing, chances are one of us represented the buyer! And in this sellers’ market it takes an experienced Realtor to negotiate the best price for her clients.

A new listing I had in Laurel Heights was marketed for 8 days, received several offers and sold well in excess of the asking price of $1,495,000. The sellers received advice from staging expert, Arthur McLaughlin, and hired him to stage their condo using mostly their own furnishings. We had 2 open houses broker’s tours and then looked at multiple offers. If you have a property you would like to sell, I can advise you on the best way to prepare it for market so you receive the top value. I represented them as buyers in 2001 and when they sold this year, they received close to 10% annual appreciation on their condo. San Francisco real estate is a GREAT INVESTMENT!

- Janis Stone

Foster Weeks publishes a weekly mortgage report which is updated every Monday morning. How is this affecting the San Francisco real estate market? Read our weekly and monthly market reports. Foster points out that many of these so called “experts” are often more wrong than they are right in their predictions.

…After Bond prices and home loan rates recently suffered their most dramatic worsening in more than three years, Bill Gross, CEO of monster Bond fund PIMCO, just decided that despite his previous position to the contrary, he is now a self-proclaimed “Bond Bear”. Dollar short, day late for that visionary input, Bill. But interesting…he has notoriously been on the wrong side of the crystal ball in recent years – and the significant improvement in Bond pricing over the last several days makes one wonder if Traders are betting the odds, and doing exactly the opposite of what Bill Gross suggests.

Last week started out nasty for Bonds and home loan rates, as Traders continued to sell off Bonds on their fears of continued inflation, and reduced demand for our US Bonds from foreign investors. But later in the week, things began to turn around – dramatically. One big reason was the very welcome news on Friday that inflation actually does appear to be backing down. The Core Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures what we pay for the goods and services that we buy on a regular basis, but pulls out the often-volatile prices of food and energy. The latest read on inflation, which arrived on Friday, indicated that the year-over-year Core CPI dropped to 2.2%…the lowest read in more than a year. This was great news for inflation-hating Bonds and home loan rates, and although the mid-week action was volatile, rates finished up the week about where they had started… Read more.

- Foster Weeks

I wanted to give you a brief update on the bond market action for the past few days. As I discussed in the Wednesday morning meeting, the bond market seemed to be showing signs of selling capitulation and, with help from benign PPI and CPI numbers Thursday and Friday respectively, I was looking for the buyers in the bond market to return and pricing to start improving. Fortunately, that is exactly what we are seeing so far and the highs that rates hit on Wednesday morning appear to be the upper boundaries of rates at this point.

We are seeing lenders starting to reprice today for the better already and with continued follow-through, I would expect to see better pricing next week as well. Please call me or come by if you want any further information!

- Princeton Capital

Recap of things to do in San Francisco 1-20:

Part 1 – Golden Gate Bridge, Part 2 – Alcatraz, Part 3 – Japanese Tea Garden, Part 4 – Cable Cars, Part 5 – Fisherman’s Warf, Part 6 – Exploratorium, Part 7 – Mission Dolores, Part 8 – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Part 9 – Lombard Street, Part 10 – Giants Stadium, Part 11 – Mission Cliffs Rock Climbing Center, Part 12 – Beach Blanket Babylon, Part 13 – Palace of Fine Arts, Part 14 – Asian Art Museum, Part 15 – Coit Tower, Part 16 – Musee Mecanique, Part 17 – Palace of the Legion of Honor, Part 18 – The Octagon House, Part 19 – Holy Virgin Cathedral, Part 20 – San Francisco Ghost Hunt Walking Tour

ronaldleeson@haightstreetfair.org
Open Hours 11a-5:30p
http://www.haightashburystreetfair.org/

Many thanks to everyone who has read or contributed to our blog as we celebrate our one year anniversary!

- Janis Stone

SFResidence is part of the TRI Coldwell Banker office at 1699 Van Ness in San Francisco which is one of the premier offices in the City and has the market share numbers to prove it. We have some of the top agents selling real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a result, our office posts some impressive numbers.

This week sales seemed to go into a slump for our office. For the first time in a long time the ratified sales were almost the same as the number of new listings. Could the market be slowing down for summer? Could this mean we are running out of inventory? I don’t think so, but we’ll have a better idea next week.

Here are the numbers for this week:

6/13/07

• 8 new listings (average price $849,875 – low $599,000, high $1,395,000)
• 9 ratified sales (pending) (average price $851,656 – low $469,000, high $1,395,000)
• 8 closed sales (sold) (average price $1,360,625 – low $555,000, high $2,610,000)

- Janis Stone

Read what Rick Turley, President of Coldwell Banker, San Francisco/Peninsula says in his latest weekly report:

Some subtle changes were noted in our Bay Area market this week. The East Bay offices report ratified offers on well priced properties, and positive response from price reductions on some older inventory. With only a few exceptions (Orinda and Berkeley), the majority of East Bay offices reported no multiple offers. North Bay offices speak of slower activity, with Marin reporting the upper-end properties are still scarce and hot. San Francisco and the Peninsula reflect the same as Marin – it seems the higher the price, the better the opportunity for a quick sale. That should not be taken as advice for Sellers to raise their price from the current market analysis. It simply points to a greater demand for new inventory in the $2M+ range in the City and Peninsula markets.

For the City, there was a decline in the number of multiple offers, but very strong activity. I checked a 24 hour Market Watch in the SF MLS, and during one 24 hour period last week, MLS reported 42 new listings, and 45 new pending sales for the same time period. At first glance, we’re selling more than is coming to the market. The Peninsula, from Burlingame to Palo Alto continues the highest rate of multiple offer activity, with more than 50% of reported sales in multiple offers, the exception is Half Moon Bay.

The recent declines in the stock market have moved the bond yield up, and we are already experiencing the upward pressure on interest rates. As SF Lombard noted, we should be aware that the combination of a fatigued Buyer and rising interest rates could slow us down this summer. For the immediate future, fresh inventory remains to be the key. I would encourage every potential Seller to finish their projects and get their property on the market. In most years past, we’ve said a Seller may have missed the best opportunity by waiting until June – not the case this year.

Buyers are out in full force with most areas reporting strong attendance at the nearly 600 homes held open during the week. More than 100 groups came through a Berkeley Hills listing. A home in Millbrae had over 200 attendees, and it wasn’t even its first open. The Internet and emerging technologies continue to play an increasingly important role in bringing buyers and sellers together, and increasing foot traffic at open homes. A Woodside/Portola Valley sales associate posted her listing to a Blog and had a huge turnout at her open home. The sales associate noticed that every buyer for this starter home had come as a result of Internet searches as opposed to looking in the newspaper.

Listing inventory remained steady for 13 offices, increased for 12 offices and decreased in only four. Sales activity was reported as being steady for 19 offices. It increased for seven offices and just three offices saw a decrease.

- Rick Turley

* For an e-mail alert when this report is updated, send a note to info@SFResidence.com with “weekly market report” in the subject line.

Foster Weeks publishes a weekly mortgage report which is updated every Monday morning. How is this affecting the San Francisco real estate market? Read our weekly and monthly market reports. Looks like our days of low, low rates are finally over.

…luck hasn’t been on the side of home loan rates, as Mortgage Bonds tipped over the edge on Thursday, adding to the brutal cascade lower which began on May 8th, and causing home loan rates to move significantly higher along the way. Last week the damage was particularly dramatic, as Thursday brought the largest single-day worsening in Bonds and home loan rates seen in three years. Although Friday brought a small amount of recovery, home loan rates still increased by .25% across the board overall… Read more.

- Foster Weeks