Current Market Conditions

The current drop between a seller’s initial list price and eventual sales price for the month of April is approximately 13%. There is approximately 7 ¼ months of housing inventory on the market. The tipping point between a Buyer’s and Seller’s market is 6 months of inventory. Therefore, we are in a Buyer’s market, but by no means overwhelmingly so.

The Hot Spot for sales is between $500,000 and $850,000 in sales price with one hot anomaly between $1,000,000 and $1,011,000 with 5 sales during April.

Historical Perspective:

If we take a 4 year average for the first 4 months of the year (years 2005 thru 2008) and compare it with the first 4 months of 2009, we get the following results concerning single family homes for the South Coast County (Carptineria thru Goleta).

Sales are Down 28%
Median Sales Price is Down 31%
Homes with Sales Pending Down 18%
Homes falling out of Escrow Up 84%
The Fall-Through percentage for Jan-Apr is Up 16.4%
New Listings is Up 9%
The Median List Price is Up 2%

The following 2 graphs for Home Sales Price and Median Sales Price for the year 2000 to the present , from January thru April is shown below: