Keeping It REAL - by Bettsy Tyler

 First, the tid-bits:   Highest priced home sold in August - SC County - $4.2 mil  Brand New - 5 bedrooms and 6 baths, 4300 sf with an apartment over the garage. Location - 2 blocks to West Cliff.    Least expensive home sold for $446,000 . 2 bedroom and 1 bath, 765 sf home in Boulder Creek 217 homes sold in the county in August, 179 in July, 229 in June. That doesn't tell you much, but looking at this graph tells you a lot about what is happening in the market today.     I like charts. This one shows how fast the market is moving compared to this time one year and two years ago. The number of homes selling each month are very close to the number of homes available to buy. This is definitely not a normal market and not one I’ve ever seen in my 20+ years of watching the real estate market. Just to compare - here’s how the last 17 years has looked:     The two lines have never touched like they are doing today. As ...

This is a graph of real estate activity from Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties. Though each county has their own particulars, in general the 100 data points since our first days of SIP shows good signs of recovery. New listings are close to  where they we would expect them to be this time of year if it were a "normal" year and sales are catching up as well. June numbers will be out next week which will be good to compare with last year. Because we are seeing the pending sales increasing this month particularly in the Santa Cruz region, I expect the summer will be more like the usual Spring selling season. Where Summer usually has a little slow down with many people taking vacations and being away on various activities, I am curious to see if this year we'll see something different. 

Santa Cruz County Real Estate Sales - How do things compare to last year? Listings began to climb starting in February last year, a little earlier than usual, and reach almost 400 in April. April through September of last year (2019) there was an average of 350 new listings each month. Sales numbered about 240/month April through September. This year began stronger than last with February recording 340 new listings. Come March, however, new listings dropped to 278 and in April to 236. Sales dropped as well. Though it’s too early yet to see the Covid-19 effect, sales are definitely lower than last year at this time averaging about 160/month for March and April.  Having fewer new listings, it’s only natural to expect fewer sales. Taking a look at Months of Inventory is another way to measure what’s happening. Months of Inventory is a measure of how fast all the existing homes on the market would last assuming a) no more listings are added, and b) the rate...