Coastal Real Estate and Lifestyles

A question appeared on Coastsider, a local news source, a couple of days ago that caught my attention.  It was real estate related, of course.  I thought about what I could contribute that wasn’t already provided.

As we try to keep up with an always-changing market, using new tools that offer us speed and variation to get the needed market information, we now look to companies like the MLS - Pro.MLSlistings; RealtyTrac, Foreclosure Radar, Altos Research, The Real Estate Report, DataQuick, and Broker or Agent Metrics - along with our own brokerage-provided reports.  Real, factual, consistent information is available.  Unfortunately, it ’s not available all in one place!

One tool this site, Coastside Real Estate & Lifestyles, uses is Altos Charts.  You see it on my home page all the time.  The charts are live and updated weekly with real-time analysis for the cities at the top of the chart.  Anyone can do a quick check of the market this way, which is fun to do if you are just watching.

Altos Research is a company I like to use because they track listing data, providing complex information from various sources in a readily understandable manner, and they are well respected in the industry.  Listing data is as important as the historical data (i.e. what has happened…pending, pending with release, pending show, sold, expired, etc) which we obtain from MLS or reports from other companies.

I sometimes wonder if you may feel like Realtors keep information from you…  It really can be information overload unless you’re needing to buy or sell at that time.  Realtors walk a fine line between wanting to be transparent, fiduciary duty to our clients, and knowledge sharing.

Here’s what this week’s Altos Report Market Update for Half Moon Bay single family homes shows:

• Half Moon Bay (as a whole, not specific neighborhoods) list prices have been coming down from the peak of 2005. 

• The quartile with the lowest days-on-market is the lower-middle 25% of homes with a median price of $877,000. . . at 70 DOM.  The other three quartiles of homes currently for sale all average over 100 days on the market.

• 55% of listings have reset their days-on-market.

• 30% of properties on the market this week have price reductions.

• Average price per square foot for listings is $475.00.

Whether you should buy or sell either now, this Fall, or next Spring, will depend on your goals, timing, finances and financing, and probably other issues.  If your timing is within the next 12 months, talk to a real estate professional sooner rather than later.  The continuation of a buyer’s market may indicate further price reductions or properties coming off the market.  The better prepared you are the smoother the transaction = less stress.

If you want to receive this week’s complete Coastside Real Estate Market Update Report showing the City Overview, Characteristics per Quartile, price trends, price per square foot and inventory trends, Altos’ Market Action Index for Half Moon Bay as a whole and by Quartile, contact me.

For more market update posts like this and articles related to neighborhood market activity, subscribe to Coastside Real Estate and Lifestyles.