Housing Inventory Supply and Demand Varies by Price Point
OK, back to more serious stuff.
Not surprisingly the supply and demand dynamics for Sonoma County real estate vary greatly at various price levels indicating different forces at work. The next few posts will look at different price ranges and the number of ratified sales (escrows opened) versus the number of new listings.   My broker, Rick Laws, compiles a detailed view of market statistics on a monthly basis which is shared with the Press Democrat newspaper. Once a month I receive about 20 or 30 reports looking at homes, properties over $1 million dollars, and condominium sales throughout Sonoma County. These are pulled from sales data from the BAREIS MLS for Sonoma County and supplied via Brokermetrics.  When I need data for a particular area or type of property I can drill down deeper in Brokermetrics but the monthly standard reports give a good statistical overview of the county as a whole.  While we are “in the market” everyday and like to think we can sense trends as they emerge, it helps to have the data to confirm your senses.
The benefit being that it helps us to hopefully deduce some trends for our buyer and seller clients so that we can come up with the best strategy for their real estate needs.
 The low end of our market (under $500,000) is flooded with inventory compared to two years ago. A year ago new listings were steadily trending upward and buyer activity was nearly level.
However, the number of ratified sales in January (sales that should close in February or March) is up significantly by nearly 50%, an encouraging sign and evidence of the increased buyer activity post holiday and Super Bowl.  The question is how far up will that inventory rise, and will the buyer bump up trend continue so that the lines level out or converge, rather than trend apart as they have in the recent past?
