Recent sightings of Vendus Encourigitis — a local Palo Alto insect that emits pheromones that make sellers drop everything they’re doing and get their home on the market immediately — indicate that 2008 may turn out to be a similar year to several of its predecessors.
Here’s how this insect affects the local inventory cycle…
Buyers, sellers, and real estate agents go into Trypophan-induced hibernation around Thanksgiving, and tend not to wake up till early January. Not many new homes come on the market during that time, and not many buyers are out looking for them. This tends to be a time of uncertainty in the market: sellers are not confident about putting their homes on the market because, well, other sellers aren’t putting their homes on the market; similarly, many buyers are spooked out of the market because they aren’t seeing crowds of competition at open houses — ergo, this must not be a good time to buy.
Putting aside all questions of whether such assumptions and actions are rational or not, come January, swarms of Vendus Encourigitis descend on the city and — kablooei!!! — before you know it, the market gets unstuck, sellers finally put the for-sale sign up, and inventory starts its predictable upward march. Shortly thereafter, a related insect — Achetus Encourigitis — begins its work on the buyers, and sure enough, they descend en masse on open houses and begin buying.
Data provided by our friends at Altos Research shows us the pattern for the last couple of years: inventory is at a low at the end of the year, and begins to increase as soon as January rolls around:
A number of nearby towns exhibit similar patterns…
Saratoga:
Los Gatos:
What’s interesting about Los Gatos is that its beginning of the year inventory is somewhat higher than it normally is. Arn Cenedella* of Coldwell Banker notes a similar pattern in Menlo Park real estate, while Dave Blockhus*, also of Coldwell Banker, notes that Los Altos’ real estate inventory pattern is more similar to Palo Alto’s.
Further up the Peninsula, Burlingame has a similar pattern:
Roughly the same trend happens in many of the marquee towns up and down the Peninsula, while in the less tony towns a completely different picture is emerging — more on that in a later post.
* Dave and Arn are both clients of 3 Oceans’ sister company Domus Consulting.
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Tags: Altos Research, Buyers, Coldwell Banker, Inventory, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Real estate, Sellers