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Buyers Are More Than Willing To Wait For A Seller To Drop Her Price

A report from Housing Wire. “Although several housing markets were impacted by January’s slow growth in home sales, new data from Redfin indicates the West Coast is especially feeling the slowdown. Homes in San Jose’s metro took an average of 45 days to sell for the four-week period ending Jan. 27, an increase of 12 days from the same time period in 2018. Seattle and Portland also experienced similar slowdowns.”

“‘Buyers this year don’t have the same sense of urgency that was palpable a year ago,’ Redfin Agent Daniel Brooks said. ‘Buyers are not worried about losing out on homes and more than willing to wait for a seller to drop her price. With front-row seats to a rapidly changing market, 2019’s buyer is savvy and is adapting quickly to the new normal.'”

“‘The slowing pace of the market comes as good news for buyers who may have felt rushed in the overheated market last spring,’ Redfin writes. ‘As competition for homes eases, buyers now have more time to carefully consider what for many will be the largest purchase of their life.'”

From CNBC. “Home prices rose 4.7 percent in December, according to CoreLogic. That is the smallest annual gain since August 2012. Prices are still rising because of the shortage of homes for sale, especially on the lower end of the market. But rising mortgage rates took their toll on affordability last year, causing sales to slow. Prices usually lag sales by several months.”

“Price gains are shrinking in most markets, but prices are on the verge of falling in some of the formerly hottest markets, like California. The median price paid for all Southern California homes sold in December was $515,000, up just 1.1 percent year over year.”

“‘The roughly 1 percent annual increase in Southern California’s median sale price last month marked the lowest such gain in the uninterrupted string of year-over-year increases each month that began in April 2012,’ said Andrew LePage, a CoreLogic analyst. ‘The median’s annual increases have declined over the past year as home sales slowed and inventory rose. The median’s tiny annual gain last month also reflects a shift in market mix, where higher-end sales represented a slightly lower share of all activity compared with December 2017.'”

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This Post Has 38 Comments

  1. ‘prices are on the verge of falling in some of the formerly hottest markets, like California’

    Prices out there are sinking like a turd in a well Diane.

    2. I was in CA last month in the Monterey/Santa Cruz area. The under $750k seems to be holding up, anything under $500k is scooped up fast. Inland might be dropping and the crowded cities.

      1. “I was in CA last month in the Monterey/Santa Cruz area. The under $750k seems to be holding up, anything under $500k is scooped up fast.”

        Good luck finding even a 1br condo for under $500k down here. Every shack for sell is set with a dream price and I would estimate 75+% are sitting unsold for months on end. I hear it from the local starving realturds. The ones that do sell are either from lingering FBs that don’t know better or possibly one a the few Chinese money launderers that was able to get the money over to the states. As QT stated below, houses are constantly taken off and relisted so it may just be an illusion your witnessing.

      1. They are getting pro at this. I notice some where they list with a similar address like S west st, instead of South west st, and then get a new mls number so as not to show ANY history.

        2. Curious if you can elaborate on the Boise area. I’m due to move up there later this year and will be renting at first, but would appreciate some non-used-house-salesman truth about that market. It’s obviously very tempting to buy up there just comparatively speaking when looking at our current South and East Bay Area (Fremont, CA) prices, which are just insane.

          1. “Curious if you can elaborate on the Boise area.”

            It’s not a great place for a single guy, but a young family has a better chance there than most of California right now. The affordable homes are way out in Nampa, Star, even Eagle these days. Mountain Home AFB is to the southeast if you are a mil/gov worker. Realize that Boise is in the middle of nowhere… turbo-prop to Salt Lake City for a real flight. Typical winters have an inversion layer that means unhealthy hazy air and occasional black ice. The local infrastructure and the indigenous population have been enduring the effects of rapid growth, and if this RE downturn takes hold Boise will suffer more than California. The SF bay area has world-class opportunities in many venues if you are an achiever, and the weather is better than most places, way better!

          2. @ rms,
            Yeah, I spent 6 weeks @ OCTC last summer and occasionally got out to see around Nampa, Eagle, South Boise, and downtown. Didn’t know we’d be moving at the time so I didn’t pay attention to housing stuff while there.

            My company is moving and I’m going with ’em, so job isn’t an issue. My brother lives in Firth, and I have some friends up there. I’ll be making close to what I am in the Bay Area.

            Wife and college-aged kids in tow, and they’re not happy about it, but at this point I’m tired of getting taxed to death and looking forward to keeping more of what I make. Once settled we can actually take vacations, which B.A. living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t afford.

            Really what I’m looking for is just how crazy the housing bubble got up there, and what I can expect the next few years if things work out long term.

          3. Really what I’m looking for is just how crazy the housing bubble got up there, and what I can expect the next few years if things work out long term.

            From what I’ve heard it got crazy there too, but you won’t notice as much because the numbers will seem low to you. But if you want to save a couple hundred grand you may still want to rent for a couple of years first.

            This thread is interesting to me because I kind of have a standing offer to go to Boise any time I want (at least for now) but I’ve chosen not to entertain it because Folsom has worked out pretty well as a better compromise for me.

          4. I know a retired civil engineer who moved to the Boise area to be closer to the grand kids, Star actually, and he bought a large spec two story just before the 2008 crash. His place plunged in market value to less than half of what he paid! I’ve been to the Boise area many times during my employment, and while it is nicer than the Columbia Basin where I live, and own too, it doesn’t hold a candle to San Jose or San Luis Obispo in any rankings other than a lower cost of living.

            I recently retired, and I have two kids in college, so I am feeling the economic pain these days. I could not have pulled this off if I (we) stayed in California.

          5. I recently retired, and I have two kids in college, so I am feeling the economic pain these days. I could not have pulled this off if I (we) stayed in California.

            This is my situation exactly, except I have no money with which to retire (thanks goobermints!). We’re scraping by renting, but if I or my wife get laid off we go backwards quickly and the debts just pile up.

            That’s just no way to live. And forget buying down here, it’s worse than it was before the last bubble crash.

            Yeah, the plan is to rent a while and see if we can manage well, then if things work out we can buy there. I was very surprised to see that rent and mortgage payments were very similar up there, which of course doesn’t happen here without a $500k downpayment on your ~$1mil (or more) home. I figure a good 30-50% is in order based on some recent sites I found:

            http://www.boiserealestateplus.com/market-statistics/

          6. I figure a good 30-50% is in order based on some recent sites I found:
            To clarify, a good 30-50% CORRECTION in Boise home prices looks warranted, just based on what they looked like circa 2012. 100% increase in just 6-7 years is nuts anywhere!!

    1. Movoto is garbage. It can’t even calculate price per square foot correctly. It shows the exact same median for last month and this while lower square footage for this, but also lower $/sq foot. That or they are displaying the wrong median for this month.

  5. All for something that can’t be scientifically proven (that burning fossil fuels will catastrophically warm up the planet).

    “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to tackle climate change with her proposed Green New Deal. The plans calls for generating 100 percent of the nation’s electric power from renewable sources and building a national “smart grid” in just 10 years.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/green-new-deal-could-break-parts-of-the-us-power-system.html

    1. “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to tackle climate change with her proposed Green New Deal. The plans calls for generating 100 percent of the nation’s electric power from renewable sources and building a national “smart grid” in just 10 years.”

      Tilting at windmills is the new generation’s WWII. Just ask her.

      1. CA is moving forward with this with the Clean Power Alliance. It will be interesting to see how it works.

        1. Most of California’s energy is consumed moving water from up north to down south with roughly two-thirds of the journey uphill.

          1. We need better batteries to really unleash renewables. Flow batteries look promising. Telsa just bought Maxwell so they might be juicing their cells with better technology (e.g. dry electrodes). It’s all about the batteries baby.

  7. “And I think the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people, in gen z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change. You’re biggest issue, your biggest issue is how are going to pay for it? — and like this is the war, this is our world war II.”

    Ocasio-Cortez on Millennials: ‘We’re Like the World Is Going to End in 12 Years if We Don’t Address Climate Change’ :: Grabien News
    https://news.grabien.com/story-ocasio-cortez-millennials-were-world-going-end-12-years-if-w

    1. They still have 12 years to learn not to trust the people trying to scare them. It might be fun to watch as long as they don’t freak out and start yanking on the steering wheel.

  8. And then there’s this …

    The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

    http://www.vhemt.org/

    I will be happy to volunteer a (rather long) list of names of people I know that might be useful in getting this movement rolling along.

    😁

  9. “don’t have the same sense of urgency”

    Pent-up demand doesn’t exist.

    “savvy and is adapting quickly to the new normal”

    Realtors are liars.

    1. “I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t.”

      Chelsea Clinton

  10. “buyers now have more time to carefully consider what for many will be the largest purchase of their life“

    Years ago a financial person who I respect told me “A house isn’t the largest purchase you’ll make, your retirement should be the largest purchase. Buy your retirement then focus on a house”. Years later I still believe he was right.

  12. All one needs to do to get an idea of the delusion of some sellers is to look at the recent sales on Zillow and compare it to open listing prices. In Santa Clarita some the homes are listing 50-100k above sales of the same model homes in the same neighborhood. Rents are far below the total monthly cost of purchasing a property and will start to fall when sellers fail to move their properties at a time when ARMs will increase the overall monthly costs of owning a home.

    We all have front row seats to a downward economic spiral and shorting banks and builders will be just as good as it was in 2008-2009.

  13. Not in Sacramento. I saw condos selling 500-600k in downtown Sacramento off 7th and R Street. Also places like Curtis Park and Midtown are super expensive and homes are selling quickly for 600-2million. I don’t see a drop.

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