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Palo Alto market sentiment: bouyant demand, early spring buying season

 Kevin Boer, Broker Owner, 3 Oceans Real Estate, Inc. ()

January 18th, 2007 · 5 Comments

Downturn?  What downturn?  The bubblistas may have to wait juuuust a bit longer (as they have been for seven years) for  the foretold 40% market correction to happen around here.  The new year has opened up here in the Peninsula with a bang for the real estate market, and whatever wobbly consumer sentiment there may have been in the last quarter of last year has been replaced with, well, quite frankly, a bit of a feeding frenzy.

If OFHEO and NAR numbers are trailing indicators of the market, and Altos Research’s real estate data represent leading indicators, then pre-leading indicator factors would have to be open house interest, and number of bids submitted.

Open house interest:  By both of those metrics, the market has started off with a healthy bang.  Of the 20-odd open houses hosted last weekend by colleagues in my office, most were swamped with interested buyers.
Multiple offers: I submitted an offer today on one of those rare finds:  a sub-million dollar Palo Alto listing.  Alas, 14 of my colleagues and their clients had the same thought.  Multiple offers have been happening up and down the Peninsula in the last 10 days or so.  Normally this level of activity doesn’t start till the rains end and Spring begins.

What will happen this year in the real estate market?  Who knows…I certainly don’t.  But I can say, with fair certainty, that it ain’t gonna be crashing around here any time soon.

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Tags: Palo Alto · Real estate

5 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Dominique // Jan 19, 2007 at 10:10 pm

    14 offers?

    Would that by any chance have been the property on Ross Rd?

  • 2 Kevin Boer, Three Oceans Real Estate // Jan 19, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    Rumor has it the Ross Rd property ended up with over 20 offers. If you’re interested in the number of offers on recent sales, email me and I’ll give you the url and password to where I’m tracking that information.

  • 3 Greg C // Jan 21, 2007 at 11:38 am

    Kevin,

    I’m sad to hear that I’ll have to wait a little longer, but am happy to hear that people still like my hometown. :) Quick question, is there any chance that the owners selling houses now have priced their houses to sell more quickly? I agree that people showing up at open houses and bidding indicates demands, but I’d like to know if the ask prices have anything to do with this.

  • 4 Kevin Boer, Three Oceans Real Estate // Jan 21, 2007 at 12:06 pm

    It’s unlikely that better pricing has anything to do with the resurgence of multiple offers, as this literally started happening the 3rd week of January. While it is theoretically possible that all of the new sellers out there priced their homes lower in the 3rd week than did those in the 2nd week, the more likely reason is increased buyer activity. We do typically get a strong surge in the spring; perhaps this surge is simply starting earlier than in previous years.

  • 5 Rain or Shine — What’s your preference? Depends if You’re a Buyer or Seller… // Jan 26, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    [...] This may explain the unusually early spring buying season we’ve been experiencing.  We often get Seattle-type weather this time of year, with week after endless week of drizzing rain.  As soon as the rain stops, the spring buying season starts.  Last year the rain stopped late, and so the buyers came out late too.  This year the rain stopped early — or so we thought — and the last two weeks have seen pretty frantic activity. [...]

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