Coming off a hot June, July sales for the nine-county region reached a 10-year high for that month, as deals were cut for 6,765 single-family homes.
"In terms of the activity level, it's the strongest summer market we've seen since the housing bust," said Andrew LePage, research analyst for CoreLogic, the real estate information service that crunched the numbers.
Among the leaders in the sales flurry were Contra Costa County with a 15.1 percent jump over July 2014, Alameda County with a 13.7 percent year-over-year leap, and Santa Clara County with an 8.6 percent increase. For the two East Bay counties, the July sales were the busiest since 2005, while Santa Clara sales represented a six-year high.
Sales fell 7.9 percent year-over-year in San Mateo County, where there typically are fewer transactions. But with that drop in sales volume came a new peak for median prices in San Mateo County: a whopping $1,225,000.
Elsewhere in Silicon Valley and the East Bay, however, median prices fell just enough to make some agents and buyers wonder if a seasonal cooling was on hand.
When prices were spiking everywhere in April, Bach Tran, a software engineer, listed his Sunnyvale fixer-upper -- a 1,700-square-foot "Frankenstein house" -- for $780,000 and sold it for $935,000, a price that was "way beyond even our top estimate." This week, he and his co-investor are preparing to close on their purchase of a 1,300-square-foot home in San Jose for $516,800, about $6,000 below the asking price.
Having benefited from the spring heat and the summer chill, he said, "I'm a happy customer."
"Things are cooling down a little," said Palo Alto-based Sereno agent Alex Wang, who handled both those deals. He observed that more buyers are biding their time with the result that properties are "trending toward longer days on market. If it's the right house in the right place and it's priced really attractively, you're still going to get multiple offers, but not as many as we were seeing in the spring. But this could be seasonal and we'll also probably see a slight uptick in the fall."
Prices can still inflict sticker shock in Santa Clara County, though the July median of $915,000 was down from the June peak of $946,500.
The Alameda County median was $706,000, down from $716,500 the previous month, though still hovering near the May peak of $724,000. Contra Costa County's median was $500,000, down from $512,000 in June -- and still chasing its May 2007 peak of $654,000.
Source: Mercury News, Richard Scheinin
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28666257/summer-real-estate-busiest-july-since-2005
No comments:
Post a Comment