Half Moon Bay Homes for Sale: Open for Business!

Inventory is plentiful on the San Mateo County Coastside!  In fact, a couple areas of Half Moon Bay are opportunities for buyers!  With the highest level of inventory that any veteran Realtor might recall, Ocean Colony currently has 23 active listings!  The other area with a lot to choose from is Miramar.  Both of these neighborhoods are in Half Moon Bay (the orange line in the graphs below).   Typically, in a “normal” market, these great neighborhoods have very few listings available at any one time.  Why then, would they have so much for sale right now?

First, both of these neighborhoods are “move-up” areas, high income areas, 2nd home areas.  In recent years, first time home buyers and downsizers have taken center stage.  Move-up buyers are coming back into the market now; however, those seller/buyers must decide if they will sell first or buy first, not an easy choice without a crystal ball, and some are faced with selling the current home with less equity (or any?) to put into the “move-up” home.  Decisions are taking a little more time.

Secondly, the tight credit has kept some would-be buyers out of the market.  Even though higher-end buyers are resuming their home shopping, it is not at the same pace as the sellers would like to have their houses sold, creating more inventory than demand.  The chart below shows the pace of new listings on the Coastside in the last 12 months.  The number on the left bar (0.0 to 5.5) is the 90 day rolling average.  The 90 day rolling averages are computed by Altos Research using the previous 13 weeks of actual values.  The new listings are mostly from the 2 neighborhoods.  If you’ve always wanted to live in Miramar or Ocean Colony, now may be a good time to assess your personal economy to see if making a move to your dream neighborhood is timely.