Last weekend’s Super Bowl seemed to have little or no impact on
the more than 350 Open Homes our agents provided throughout the San
Francisco Bay region. Reports of 148 attendees on a North Bay listing,
and over 300 for the weekend at a Menlo Park Open House were not met
with surprise. In densely populated areas such as San Francisco’s
Noe Valley, it was back to the old days of cars double parked up and
down the narrow streets as Buyers scrambled to see the few new listings
introduced to the market this past week.
It’s perfectly clear that what’s “not right” with
this current market is not enough inventory. We are hearing the same
lament in all our offices – from Palo Alto in the South to the
Marina District of San Francisco in the North. It appears our offices
in North Bay and East Bay share the same concerns. Of the offices that
reported declining sales this week, it seems they are the same offices
reporting decreasing inventory. You can’t sell it if you don’t
have it.
Multiple offers are ruling the day again. Consider our Woodside office,
perhaps harder hit in the “adjusting” market of 2006 due to
the price point of their inventory. This week they reported 8 sales,
of which 50% were in multiple offers. Six months ago it seemed Woodside
was very far away from multiple offers being the norm again anytime
soon. Burlingame reported multiple offers this week from the $700K price
point to a recent listing they introduced at $3M. San Francisco agents
are back to asking what the “offer date” is of a new listing,
where it’s plain to see that nearly 50% of all sales are going
into multiple offers in the City. It’s too soon to see if this
is a “blip” or a trend – but in the meanwhile, the best
Valentine’s present any Bay Area homebuyer could receive would
be for more Sellers to get their homes on the market.
Rick Turley
President
Coldwell Banker SF/Peninsula
