Market Trends: Redwood City Real Estate - Dec. 14, 2012

For the past seven days, Christmas in Redwood City has been in full swing.

This time of the year is being celebrated by most future home-buyers. Consequently, there wasn’t much activity, so this week's Market Trends is limited in scope, as it was not your “normal” real estate market.

Next week I will give an end-of-the-year report that will compare what has happened in 2012.

In the past seven days, Bay Area homes coming on the market for sale in Redwood City decreased in numbers to three. This is seven less than last we reported, of 10 new homes.

The housing inventory in Redwood City has steadily increased since reaching its low in mid-July. At the end of September, the housing inventory increased sharply and has continued. This is good if you are a home-buyer because you have more of a selection of homes to choose from now.

If you’re interested in knowing more about market trends for Redwood City homesthis past week, please continue reading this post. The information is compiled from data off the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and #SFBayHomes.com.

The average selling price for homes sold in Redwood City trended down this past week to $895,000 from the previous week's price of $923,000. The total number of new listings and transactions that had fallen out of escrow was seven.  While the number of homes with pending sales, or sales that had removed all their contingencies and were ready to close escrow, was 14, which is down three houses since last week. Closed escrows homes were 11, which is the same as last week.

Important: worth noting is the months of inventories available to future home buyers. Currently that is 10 months, which is up from October’s figure of 4.7 months. This means there are more homes to choose from for home-buyers. The 2012 figure for months of inventory has hovered around 2.5 months. The months of inventories has been steady all year, however, in mid-July we saw a sharp rise in the amount of homes available to Redwood City home-buyers. This is our typical summer home market.

Worth noting is the sale price to list price ratio, which has decreased since the high ratio of last week's 106.2% with this week coming in at 103.7%. November’s ratio was 103.8%, October’s ratio was 101.5%, September’s ratio was 103.0%, August’s ratio was 101.3%, July’s ratio that was 101.5; June’s was 101.6% and May’s 100.5%.

Finally, the average number of days for a home to sell in Redwood City is up this week to 56 days. Last week that figure was 37 days. The beginning of 2012 started out with taking 96 days for a home to sell. This number of days for a home to sell has been on an upward trend since September and bottomed out in July. I think July numbers can be blamed on people being on vacation, and little activity in the home market. The current uptick can be blamed on the holidays, which typically is cause for lack of activity.

Last week the average price per square foot a home-buyer was willing to pay was down by $46.00 per square foot to $455.00! In November it was $501, In October it was $515.00. In September that number was $549.00, in April that number was $461.00, May’s was $475.00, June’s was $481.00, July's was $509.00, and in August it was $551.00.

If you find this information informative and would like to receive Redwood City real estate updates on a regular basis you can go to http://SFBayHomes.com and fill in your email address on the right to receive a free newsletter.

Available: Free lists of homes from the MLS. If you want notice about homes you are looking to buy you can click the “Register Today” orange button to the right on my website's homepage and give the criteria of the home you would like to buy.  I will arrange for your own personal organizer and its results sent to you when a new home matching your criteria comes on to the market. You will have information within four hours of this information being placed in the Multiple Listing Service, (MLS), which is about as fast as I receive this information.

You will also become part of the Cliff Keith’s Insider’s Club when you sign up for your Personal Organizer. The Insider’s Club members will have information from time to time about homes that will be coming on the market for sale days, weeks, even months before everyone else know about them. This is a huge advantage for you!

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