June 2024: San Francisco Real Estate Insider
Hello and Happy Saturday.
As we end the first week of June, the local market continues to be quite fragmented. Property types, price-points and locations are not following any rhythm when it comes to sales. Single family homes under $3M continue to be the bright spot in San Francisco. Competition is pretty fierce for good homes in this category.
The condo market does not have much flow with buyers preferring (a) smaller buildings (b) views & outdoors space (c) high quality / unique properties. In the $3M-$5M category, the market has little rhythm. I see turnkey homes with published offer dates, in excess of 15 disclosures package requests and they end up with zero offers. I also see offer dates where the property receives in excess of 10 offers. The reason for this (lack of continuity) continues to be an absence of understanding on pricing and competition at “that” specific time you go to market. Pricing a property is incredibly important in this category.
In San Francisco (and from what I hear from colleagues in Southern Marin and on the Peninsula) the topic du jour seems to be centered on “should I advise my seller to list now, or wait until fall.” The proper answer would be determined by the price point of the subject property. Properties under $3M should not wait to go to market; there are plenty of buyers today. Properties priced over $5M will most likely wait until fall to see full market exposure (but should be marketed off-line over the summer). That being said, properties at or around the $5M category are moving. As I’ve covered since my February report, luxury home sales in the Bay Area are on the upswing. So far this year, we are up by two-thirds on a year-over-year comparison (April to April) when it comes to sales activity. The upward movement was pushed by a rallying stock market as well as market and buyer confidence.
Looking at the Bay Area, Santa Clara County has had by far the most sales between $3M and $5M (from Jan. 1 to May 15) with 590 sales. It also leads in the $5M to $10M category with 113 sales. There were 21 sales above $10M on the Peninsula so far this year, just slightly less than the rest of the nine-county Bay Area put together.
San Francisco’s luxury market fell behind San Mateo and Santa Clara this year, but the city still had 200 deals over $3M (with 40 of those for condos, co-ops or TICs). Looking at San Francisco sales during the last 12 months:
<$3M - 50% of sales sold over asking
$3M to $5M - 40% of sales sold over asking
$5M to $10M - 28% sold over asking
>$10M- zero sales over asking
Here are some data points for the luxury market. The top sales in the Bay Area by county.
List price compared to final sale price segments by county.
San Francisco luxury home sales ($5M+).
That is it for now.
Call or email, anytime.