Lafayette Real Estate Market Trend reports show that, as the nation continues to struggle through the worst real estate and financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Lafayette California real estate market continues to improve.
Take a look at the Supply/ Demand graph below, which charts Lafayette homes for sale and Lafayette condos and townhomes for sale versus the number of homes sold in Lafayette over the past three years.
Lafayette Real Estate Market Trend – Supply and Demand
Both the Lafayette homes for sale (Supply) and the Lafayette homes sold (Demand) have shown a steady increase over the past three years
We can see a steady rise in the number of Lafayette residential homes for sale, but we can also see that these homes fed an increasing home buyer appetite, a good sign for the Lafayette CA real estate market as a whole.
Even more promising is the fact that the number of bank owned homes for sale, or “repo homes” as they are sometimes called, are down from their highs in Q2 2009 and have remained relatively flat throughout 2010. The latest home sales figures for the last quarter of 2010 show that Lafayette foreclosure homes for sale are taking a larger market share of the overall Lafayette real estate market.
This could be a sign that Lafayette home buyers see these properties as bargains and are snapping them up and taking them off the market.
Since the last quarter of 2007, Lafayette home sales have increased 38%. Typically, there is an increase in home sales from the last quarter of the previous year to the first quarter of the next, and this seasonal housing sales trend continues to the summer months.
Another important gauge of real estate market activity in Lafayette are the number of Lafayette homes for sale that went into contract. Over the same period, Q4 2007 to Q4 2010, there has been an increase of 42% in market activity.
It should be noted, however, that the number of expired listings in Lafayette has also increased. A much smaller number of those homes for sale were bank-owned repo homes, suggesting that individual sellers were less realistic about home values that the typically more pragmatic banks.
With great schools, moderate weather, and close proximity to large employment centers such as San Francisco and Oakland, Lafayette has always been one of the most desireable East Bay Area communities. Let’s hope these upward trends continue in our next Lafayette Real Estate Market Trends report.
