VISHAL SHARMA
Alliance Bay Realty
The latest forecasts for the San Francisco Bay Area suggest that home prices will continue rising throughout 2019. The good news is that Bay Area home buyers could have more properties to choose from next year, thanks to some much-needed inventory growth that has taken place in recent months.
In its 2019 housing market forecast, the California Association of REALTORS® wrote “The outmigration trend (during 2018) was even worse in the Bay Area, where housing was the least affordable, with 35 per cent of homebuyers moving out because of affordability constraints.”
It is considered a buyer’s market if there is more than six months of inventory. A balanced market is considered three to six months of inventory. Right now, we are still in a phase where a home is sold on average in two to three weeks. While a lot of counties are seeing different demands year to date from 2018 to 2019, San Francisco and San Mateo counties are still standing in good position.
Buying now still makes sense because interest rates are historically low as fed has not raised rate of interest in last couple months which makes big impact on buyers’ affordability to buy more expensive homes. While we are starting to see the markets cool a little, saying that the sky is not falling but rather we are finally seeing the market balance out.
Job growth in the Bay Area and statewide has expanded for such a long time that unemployment rates have been driven to record or near-record low levels, which in turn shrinks the pool of people available to be hired by employers. Long-awaited tech IPOs will impact the Bay Area’s residential real estate market is something realtors, potential home buyers and sellers alike have been mulling over for months.
According to the California Association of Realtors, the Bay Area median price rose 4.5 per cent in January 2019 compared to January 2018. Median home prices in Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties continued to remain above $1 million, while Marin County recorded a 12.8 per cent annual price decline.
2019 is going to be a good year for selling homes. California GDP is strong and consumers have lots of buying power with record low interest rates persisting.
Following data of median sold price of existing single family homes released by California Association Of Realtors in May 2019:
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