Three months ago, I ruled the world. My strong buyers could pick up any Sonoma County property they wanted for good discounts off the list price. I still have great buyers, but finding a property to offer on is tough. Harder still is going up against as many as a dozen other buyers...in two days after a listing hits the market. This is going on in many places, but the ground zero for vanishing inventory and a seller's market is Rohnert Park.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but I don't know if that applies to pictures of words. It's the best I can do to show the situation in Rohnert Park, both for REO properties and open market sales. The screen capture below is for a Hot Sheet. For my readers who aren't real estate professionals, the Hot Sheet is a snapshot designed to show what's going on right now. Most often it would be used to see all the new listings in the past day or week. In this case I stretched the Hot Sheet back a full 30 days to look at single family homes under $325,000 in Rohnert Park. I chose the price since several of my buyers want to stay under that number to keep their monthly payments comparable to renting (around $1,500 per month).
The bottom line is that of the 13 listings showing up on the Hot Sheet, ten are contingent sales and three are already gone. Taken. Absorbed. Bought. Ripped from my grasping hands. No leftovers saved for me. None of the houses listed in the last 30 days are available. However you want to put it, the sellers in this market are getting lots of offers and buyers are getting lots of grief. If this sounds like complaining, it is. But I don't really mean it.
In the real world, I loudly celebrate the return of an acutal real estate market where buyers and sellers cooperate to determine fair market values for their property. We haven't had an actual real estate market since the bubble burst and REO properties flooded onto the market in record numbers. Is this seller's market here to stay? I don't think anybody can say for certain, but along with my other posts talking about market bottoms earlier in the year, this is one more confirmation that we are moving back into familiar territory. I think everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that the worst might be over.
Comments(2)