New Listing Market Watch -- Typical for this time of year

New listings were down almost 10% compared to the previous period but up 21% compared to a year ago.  Compared to the previous all of the change was in the condo category with only 175 new listings compared to 203 two weeks ago.

However, compared to a year ago it was single family homes showing an increase:  117 compared to 81 last year.

The number of new listings that went into contract in the last two weeks was flat compared to the prior period (13.7% for single family homes compared to 11.1% and 15.4% for condos compared to 14.3%.

Compared to a year ago the percentages were similar for single family homes (13.7% compared to 11.1% a year ago) but for condos the percentage was down this year compared to last (15.4% vs 19.0% a year ago).

Notice the spike that occurs regularly at the end of each year, mostly due to a sharp fall off in new listings.

Price reductions were up for single family homes compared to the previous period (9 vs 5) but about the same as the previous year (9 vs 10).  For condos there were 15 price reductions compared to 20 in the previous period and compared to 28 a year ago).

Early effects of COPA

For those of you who have been following the new COPA legislation and how it might affect our real state market, linked below is a copy of our monthly report or 2-, 3-, and 4-unit properties for January.  For this analysis we focus on 3-unit buildings (3-flats).

http://www.boldsf.com/Statistics test/Statistics reports/2020/01-2020/San Francisco Fundamentals 2020-combined extract 3.pdf

What's important to note with the January sales is that the selling price of 3-unit properties was almost 11% below December's average selling price along with a hefty increase in the number of properties sold.  There was a similar decline in the low price, high price, and median price of 3-unit buildings between January and December.

Another item that stands out is in the "premium" column which shows the percentage of the sales price over or under the asking price.  In January the selling price for 3-unit building was 9% below asking price (91% of asking price).  By comparison, during each of the four quarters of 2019 the premium had been at or just above asking price (100-104%).

http://www.boldsf.com/Statistics test/Statistics reports/2019/Quarterly/San Francisco Market Analysis combined 4th qtr 2019 BHHSLux extract 3.pdf

We also note that those 3-unit buildings that sold in January and February 2020 spent  87 and 79 days on market respectively.  This is much higher than in previous two quarters and marks the point in time the COPA legislation became widely known.

Also, for comparison, our quarterly report shows sales of 2-4 unit properties and has data for the full year by quarter.

The quarterly report for 2019 shows it was a fairly active market with the number of sales typically in the 6-10 per month range except for the first quarter which shows only 12 sales for the entire quarter.  By comparison, January 2020 itself had 11 sales perhaps because of a rush to sell before the effective date of COPA and the uncertain market post-COPA.

I consider January to be the first definitive data on COPA.

Comments or questions?

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"Closing Costs" explained

A concise itemization:

The first two are typically paid by the buyer.  Transfer tax in San Francisco is typically (customarily) paid by the seller; elsewhere in northern California it may be split between buyer and seller.