Rebecca White

Whereas it is a mixture of pride and ego that I have intermittently been considered "creative", I am flattered that the outlet that is active rain allows me not only to rant and ramble-but to be recognized for doing so--thank-you active rain!!!

Which brings me to the real meat of my post: I am sad. I might be getting a new listing and I am ambivalent about it. Why? I am currently working on three listings in East Oakland-all three are a grand total of less than $800,000. I ran into a former colleague over the weekend. She told me that someone walked in to her new office and was plunking down $3 million for a condo. With transactions in the $200's and $300's, I couldn't even conceive how many it would take to achieve that lofty level.

I recall a decade ago in Oregon when some agents wouldn't work with clients spending less than $300 or 350 thousand. I sold lots and condos in the $50-70,000 range and was proud to sell one house for around $250,000 to attain the distinction of "MMDP" (multi-million dollar producer-in the late 90's this was $3 million in volume in the Portland area).

As usual, I digress. Why am I concerned about taking a listing around $100,000? Because I won't make very much money? No. Because it could be hard to sell? Maybe-but then I pride myself on my marketing so I am reasonably confident that I can sell this house. It is probably one of two reasons. One, that a wonderful old lady lived in this house forever, couldn't afford to fix it up much-other than a new roof-and her entire life has dwindled to less than $100,000 (net). The second reason is even more tragic. This elderly woman wanted to do the right thing and leave her only asset to another delightful woman who cared for her. But the deceased woman changed bank accounts and her insurance company canceled her policy. And the recipient of this largesse is terminally ill and stands to benefit very little other than a whole lot of aggravation. (And owes more than half the "value" of the home to medical bills and an attorney-the attorney will make more than my potential commission.)

So, to answer my own dilemma, will I take this listing, if offered? Yes. But, will I feel good about it? I am not sure. Yes, I want the heir to have her shekels and enjoy her remaining days but I am pissed off that it is not enough for her to enjoy some comfort and reward for her caretaking and inconvenience.

And more than anything, I really don't know who benefits from this screwed up economy as I see many people "losing" in this situation.

Thankfully, I believe in karma and am optimistic about being "rewarded" later.

I have been meaning to blog about my new listing as I was really excited about it: a fixer in San Francisco, with a view of the Bay, over 1000 square feet and a price tag of $450,000.

Despite posting after midnight, I woke up the next morning to two messages from agents wanting to show my new listing. I had to make a special trip to put a lock-box on so that it could be shown.

Before I could hold the house open, we received a bona fide, over asking, offer. Just after we ratified the first offer, we received a second offer—also over asking (but not quite as high). A few days later, yet another offer. Days later, I was still receiving phone calls. These finally subsided once the property showed as contingent.

The moral of all this: if a property is priced well, in a good location and marketed; it will sell! And because I have the good fortune of having a listing in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, my listing received multiple offers—all over asking! Don’t worry, I am not bragging, I am just eternally grateful to the colleague who referred these clients to me. Hooray for networking relationships—they DO work. And I am continually working to dispel any annoying rumors about our market being bad. Oh say it isn’t so. I just did.

P.S. My blog title refers to the street of my listing. More info here just in case... www.391Teddy.com

I always find it interesting when everyone assumes that the market downturn applies equally to all parts of San Francisco—or even to San Francisco at all--and that our market is bad.

Here are some recent stats from our local RE association for July, ’08. to dispel any notions of such nonsense.

Yes, our median is price is down—but it is still $850,000—a mere drop of 4% since last July.

Yes, our days on the market have increased—and it seems to be a whopping 21.9%--but this is only 39 days (compared to 32 last year)—still less than six weeks!!

So it is hard not to chuckle when I receive a very sincere email from someone wanting to buy real estate in San Francisco for less than $200,000. The even more amazing part of this is that of the 1365 residences on the market, there are actually THREE under $200,000. Yes, they are in Hunter’s Point or the Bayview, nonetheless, such anomalies do exist. Who woulda thunk?

As I am listing a home in University Heights, I have been analyzing Portola recently and can share the following statistics with you. (If you'd like to see the pretty colored charts, email me and I'll send them to you.)

Last year, there were a total of 136 listings of single-family residences.. (I say listings as opposed to individual properties as one home alone was withdrawn FIVE times!)

In 2007, over half of these 136 properties, 71, or 52.2% SOLD; approximately 43% were withdrawn or expired; 3% are still active (averaging 200 days on the market and a median price nearly $200,000 higher than the median price of those that sold) and 2.2% are pending.

This is an average of 6 sales per month and 55 days on market.

Let me give you some numbers for 2008. I can share my thoughts and then you may draw your own conclusions...

So far in 2008, there are 51 houses in all statuses (active, contingent, expired, inactive, pending and sold). Thus as far as overall activity, this is close to 2007. (2007: 136 listings divided by 12 months is 11.33 per month of some type of listing. 2008: 51 divided by 4 1/3 months equals 11.86 listings of different types per month.)

As I mentioned, in 2007, there were 71 sales or about 6 per month. So far in 2008, there have been 11 sales are about 2 1/2 per month. If I'm optimistic and add the contingent (1) and pending sales (4) in for a total of 16 transactions this year, divided by 4 1/3 months, that yields almost 4 per month--either way, the sales activity is behind last year's.

My chart shows 43% active, 22% sold, 27% other and 8% pending.

What does all this mean? Are sales down because there is less inventory? After all, there are half as many sales so far this year as there are listings and depending on how one looks at it, a 5 1/2 to 8 month supply of inventory--with no new listings.

What concerns me somewhat about this area is that there are half a dozen short sales.

As the median price is down from $722,000 last year to $573,000 this year and the median days on market have increased 33% (from 55 to 73); I'd say that there is some good opportunity here to buy--in my opinion--in Portola. The people whom I know who live there have lived there for 30 years and love their neighborhood. Of course, some streets are more desirable than others.

As far as selling, I am very optimistic about my listing as it's on a desirable street and doesn't have a lot of comparable competition. With new paint and (unwarranted rooms) in the lower level, it will sell because it is in good condition and has a great location.

A few last thoughts...
1) One of my clients moved TO the Portola District as that's where she grew up and wanted to live and raise her family.
2) Other people hate San Bruno as there isn't any decent shopping.
3) I still don't know an easy way back to the freeway. :)

I just got an email from my title company rep and wanted to share some of my ponderings on this with you.

First of all, San Francisco is a very diverse market and very much a neighborhood-by-neighborhood market. The info I have is by districts which is still very general. We only have 10 MLS districts in The City so this info is not as neighborhood-specific as it could be. (These numbers are single-family residences only.)

The first item that I found interesting was the days on market. In half the districts, this number was up and in half, the number was down. District 10 (Outer Mission, Crocker Amazon, Vis Valley, Bayview, Hunter's Point, Excelsior, etc.) had the highest DOM (days on market) at 67. District 3 (SW Area) was not too far behind with 61 DOM and District 7 (Pac Hts, Presidio etc.) only had one nearly $5 million sale that took 54 days.

The rest of the districts had average market times ranging from 4-6 weeks. Compared to most of the country and other parts of California and the Bay Area, this is a short amount of time.

Conclusion, properties priced correctly sell quickly as these are averages. Case in point, I showed some clients a vintage Inner Richmond house that was supposed to be on tour Tuesday and open again this weekend. When I checked on disclosures Tuesday--two days after we saw it--the property had already received SEVEN pre-emptive offers and presumably went 20% over asking (which was $950,000 for a fixer!)!

As far as number of sales, in every district the number of sales was nearly the same as a year ago or down; some by a lot such as District 10 which was down 40% (45 sales in March 2007 and 27 sales March 2008) and District 7 which was down 90% (10 sales lat year vs. one this March). A few districts were off by 25-33% and some by only 1 or 2 sales.

I think that the lower number of sales in most districts (northern SF) has to do with a lack of inventory. In some areas--where first-time buyers might be able to afford something--it's probably due to a lack of qualified buyers. Not that people don't want to buy, just the FICO requirements are more stringent (I have ranted on this in the past).

The last item that Nachelle had tracked (and SFAR tracks this as well) was the median selling price. Again, this was split 50/50 among the 10 districts. Districts 1 (Richmond, etc.) and 5 (Noe, Glen Park, Haight Ashbury, etc.) had--for the number of sales (14 and 29 respectively)--the highest median increases of close to half a million each! Many of the districts that went down in median price only did so slightly, 1-2%; and only Districts 3 and 10 (the far southern edges) had dramatic decreases IMHO. The median price in District 3 dropped 23% to $566,000 and 20% in District 10 to $550,000.

This means that some of our neighborhoods have median prices below $600,000 and a single-family home can be had for the same price as a one-bedroom condo or TIC in South Beach or the North End.

May I reiterate, with interest rates low, it is an excellent time to buy and San Francisco is a perennially strong market.