San Mateo Real Estate Newsletter

Single Family home prices have been rising slightly over the past few months, but don’t get to excited, so have inventories. While the average home in San Mateo County sold for $1.02M [last time prices were this high was July 2008], the real cause for the increase in prices has been an increase in sales of larger homes. Meantime, San Mateo County’s home inventory for July was 2,020, we had never exceed 2,000 homes before. The story remains the same, about the same number of sellers keep coming to market every single month, but fewer homes are actually selling and of course this feeds the home inventory. In my opinion we are now reaching inventory levels which may negatively impact home prices.

The sale Price for all San Mateo County Single-Family Homes vs. the Dow Jones Index monthly average

SAN MATEO COUNTY
INVENTORY , CLOSED SALES, NEW LISTINGS
& DAYS ON MARKET

	Current Inventory	Closed Sales	New Listings	Sales YTD	Listings YTD
This Past Month	2,020	385	687	2,374	4,661
Decade Average	1,454	514	730	2,942	4,886
% Diff	39%	-25%	-6%	-19%	-5%

SAN MATEO COUNTY Graph 1 plots monthly Inventories, Closed Sales and New Listings. This graph is an excellent visual for determining the strength of the real estate market.	Graph 1—Monthly Inventories, Sales and New Listings for Single-Family Homes in San Mateo County

SAN MATEO COUNTY Graph 2 looks at the same type of data as Graph 1, but it compares it from a seasonable point of view. It compares the numbers for the identical month over past years	Graph 2—Inventories, Sales and New Listings for Single-Family Homes in San Mateo County for a given month

SAN MATEO COUNTY Graph 3 is a cumulative look at Year-to-Date statistics for Closed Sales vs. New Listings.	Graph 3—Total Single-Family Homes Sold & New Listings Year to Date in San Mateo County

REDWOOD CITY
INVENTORY, CLOSED SALES, NEW LISTINGS

Redwood City is a perfect example of rising prices not equating to real appreciation in home values. While in the past few months we have seen average home prices rise from $734K to $935K, each month the average of the houses and lots sold have also increased. It’s very debatable whether prices increased at all! See the chart below.

Month	Ave Price	Ave. Living Space	Ave. Lot Size
May	$754K	1,540 sf	7,066 sf
June	$857K	1,696 sf	8,113 sf
July	$935K	1,998 sf	10,679 sf

While inventories may not be at all time highs in Redwood City, we are nonetheless near there. Redwood City has faired a little better then the county overall as the number of new listings are actually down 10% vs. the county only being down 5%. Both the County and Redwood City are experiencing sales about 19% below normal, so if it was not for fewer listings, Redwood City would also be experiencing record inventories.

Average Monthly Stats for Single Family Homes in Redwood City