Step By Step, Slowly I Turn

Lately it has been very difficult to sort through the mish-mash of opinion, sort the authority from the amateur, and come away with a clear picture of our current Real Estate market situation.

So I decided to see for myself!

I took the communities of Lafayette, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, and Martinez – the “core” of Contra Costa County – looked at all 3 to 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1800 to 2500 square foot homes sold or on the market in the past year.  These are typical homes for this area and are as close to a broad market snapshot as I can get.

This wasn’t going to be self-serving cheer-leading by some Realtor – I wanted to see the market as it was and is.

The results are not only interesting – they are somewhat heartening as well!

First of all, while the Median Price is a little lower today than it was in 2008, the number of sales is steadily increasing.  There were several months in 2009 where sales activity went well into the upper price ranges, suggesting move-up buying.

The number of homes under contract to sell (pending sales) is also showing a steady increase, indicating new buyers are still coming into the market.

But the biggest change is in the amount of homes on the market.  In December 2007, there was over a year’s supply of homes sitting on the market!  By the end of 2008, that number had fallen to seven months.  At the end of December 2009, there is a 2.8 month supply of homes available for sale.

Before we turn our pessimism in to unbridled euphoria, a little under three months supply of homes is still rather high. Before you can have any degree of market stability, much less market appreciation, there must be enough market activity to absorb the current inventory and not let homes “stack up” on the market

Lately, we have had a lot of action from the government in stimulating the housing market.  Clearly, this is seen at work here and our situation would be much worse without it.  But we can’t count on that forever.

But, all in all, our little part of the world is faring much better than many other parts of the country.  Hopefully, this will continue and we will slowly climb out of the biggest housing drop since the Great Depression.

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