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.

It’s apparent that when an office as high powered as ours has only 5 new listings, something is going on. Now you would think with this few listings it would mean we are having a bad market. But just the opposite is true. Prices remain strong and things are selling. We have buyers up the wazoo with nothing to show them.

The bad news just keeps coming from the media about the real estate market slump… which was pretty much created by them! Remember when the market was good and interest rates were practically zero? “The real estate bust is just around the corner.” Now that things have slowed down, “It’s going to last into 2009 for sure!”

Meanwhile savy buyers and sellers, the serious ones, continue to tune out the bad news and just go about their business. There has never been a better time to sell if your property is priced right.

Here are the numbers for this week: 10/17/07:

• 5 new listings (average price $1,289,200 – low $599,000, high $2,150,000)
• 6 ratified sales (pending) (average price $1,191,167 – low $699,000, high $1,850,000)
• 5 closed sales (sold) (average price $921,600 – low $478,000, high $1,350,000)

- 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.

…The 200-day Moving Average has historically acted as a very strong “floor of support” or “ceiling of resistance” for Bonds, meaning that Bonds generally decidedly trade above or below this line. And the current tap-dance that Bonds are doing all over this level shows that there is a bit of uncertainty in the markets – and it will take a series of economic reports that are either very strong or very weak to propel Bonds to move away from the 200-day Moving Average. Remember that strong economic news tends to move Bond prices lower, causing home loan rates to worsen – and weak economic news tends to move Bond prices higher, causing home loan rates to improve.

And last week’s news just didn’t provide enough impetus for Bonds to make a decisive move one way or the other. Retail Sales were much better than expected yet Consumer Sentiment was lower than expected, while reads on Producer Price Inflation were a bit mixed. All in all, home loan rates stayed generally flat for most of the week…

Read the entire report here.

- Foster Weeks

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

Our Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage agents are brimming with enthusiasm. Reports this week indicate that, in many areas, our more than 560 open houses were seeing steady streams of visitors, and buyer interest is up. There are slower spots around the Bay Area to be sure, but for every slow spot, there is another that is seeing exceptional activity. As I keep saying, real estate is a very local industry. The trends, numbers, statistics and “facts” we read about tell a regional story, but that story isn’t indicative of market conditions in specific locations, neighborhoods and communities. There are cold spots with high inventory levels, and there are hot spots where competition to buy a home is fierce.The reality is this – the increased median prices that are reported in most areas are affected by the fact that, in those hotter markets, the prices have barely dropped, if at all. In addition, homes in the $2 million plus range are selling quickly and often over asking price. There is a wide variety of homes available in several areas of the East and North Bays at bargain prices waiting to be snapped up. In San Francisco and the Peninsula, sales activity is down largely because inventory is down – however offices in both the Peninsula and the City noted activity and sales were more brisk at particular price points…

Read the entire report here.

- Rick Turley

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

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.

What’s happening? It is apparent that people are listening to all the negative PR when it comes to the housing market, though it has not affected prices yet… only volume. It has been a long time since we have seen such little activity in a period that is usually humming right along. But listings are scarce as people seem to be content on waiting out the manufactured “crisis”, at least manufactured here in the Bay Area.

The next time you hear something negative on the evening news about some real estate story, listen closely to WHERE the event is taking place. Foreclosures? House prices plummeting? I can almost guarantee you that it will not be happening in the Bay Area. Usually they pick some place like Texas or Florida where they have been having problems for a long time to do their stories and then air them here in San Francisco. Why would they do this? Because, if it BLEEDS it LEADS, i.e. bad news sells. The antidote? Investing for the long term!

Here are the numbers for this week: 10/10/07:

• 4 new listings (average price $1,090,000 – low $520,000, high $1,295,000)
• 6 ratified sales (pending) (average price $2,262,333 – low $485,000, high $4,950,000)
• 5 closed sales (sold) (average price $992,176 – low $559,000, high $1,861,000)

- Janis Stone

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

A home in a coveted neighborhood of Castro Valley sold within a week for $1,020,000 without even having a sign in the yard. Two Danville listings went pending in less than a week – one priced in the $680,000 range and the other at $1,179,000. Oakland-Piedmont sold a $2.5 million home preemptively, and then there were two they didn’t get in multiple offer situations. Two Pleasanton properties sold in fewer than ten days at full price. Southern Marin/Belvedere saw a $3,450,000 listing go pending in one week. Palo Alto and Menlo Park saw preemptive sales and multiple offers on approximately on half of their week’s transactions. San Francisco continues to see its high-end properties in short supply and high demand, and pretty much a well-balanced market in most other price points. Several $2M+ properties in San Francisco had as many as a half dozen disappointed buyers who lost in multiple situations this week. Cole Valley was one, another $1.8M in Corona Heights didn’t make it to the market as someone just had to have it for several hundred thousand more before the seller put it on.

It’s the triptych of real estate truth that we must continue to preach. Everyone – repeat after me, “price, condition, location.” Homes are selling – but buyers must perceive the value. Buyers perceive value when that triad is balanced in proportion to the needs of those buyers. While sellers cannot do anything about the location of their home, they can certainly invest in making the changes and upgrades to the property that are necessary to create value in its condition. In addition, when they are realistic about their price expectations, they can expect to sell in a reasonable amount of time…

Read the entire report here.

- Rick Turley

* For an e-mail alert when this report is updated, send an e-mail 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.

…it appears the Department of Labor missed some recent job creation counts by quite a long shot.

Last Friday, the highly anticipated monthly Jobs Report arrived bright and early, showing 110,000 new jobs created during September, very close to what analysts had expected. But the real surprise was the upward revision to last month’s shocking number, which had shown a LOSS of 4000 jobs in August. The revised number was a gain of 89,000 jobs, or a change of 93,000! That’s right – the Department of Labor “missed it by that much.”

Bond prices and home loan rates worsen on strong or positive economic news, so the surprising upward revisions in job growth caused Bonds and home loan rates to worsen by about .125% on Friday alone…

Read the entire report here.

- Foster Weeks

This was sent to us from one of our clients:

REMINDER….5 days from today (October 5, 2007), all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS.

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:1-888-382-1222. It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time and it blocks your number for five (5) years.. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

I did it for my phone yesterday, and it is easy to do.

- 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.

Another week of lackluster listings! Are people holding their properties off the market because of all the negative press? Could be. As we have stated before, less competition usually means multiple offers and more money because buyers are competing for a small pool of available properties. Truth be told, all the negative press about mortgage problems, foreclosures and real estate busts in other areas has made people nervous. We’ll see what happens, but it could be that the market will not pick up again until next year.

Here are the numbers for this week: 10/3/07:

• 5 new listings (average price $1,579,200 – low $520,000, high $4,200,000)
• 11 ratified sales (pending) (average price $1,200,200 – low $699,000, high $2,349,000, 1 confidential)
• 8 closed sales (sold) (average price $1,513,000 – low $597,000, high $2,800,000)
• 1 withdrawn (confidential)

- Janis Stone