The real estate market in San Ramon, CA is suffering from a lack of buyers. Sales of homes in San Ramon are flat while inventory remains high. Two factors are negatively impacting home sales activity in San Ramon: Affordability & Financing. 

First-Time buyers are being shut out of the home market in San Ramon due to the affordability crisis. Help from the state government is not on the way - hear what the Commissioner of Real Estate has to say. Last I heard, the affordability index in the area was at an all time low. Couple that with the changes in the mortgage industry and you have pretty much turned off the spigot of first-time home buyers entering the San Ramon housing market.

The best housing market San Ramon has seen in 2007 was in March and early April this year when February's pending sales closed. From February 23rd on, we have seen an ever increasing number of homes on the market and fewer pending sales. The gap has continued to widen and has now reached the point where it is pretty much uncontested that San Ramon is now a buyer's market. 

As you can see in the graph above, a year ago there was more inventory on the market, but pending sales were pretty much equal to today's level. The big difference is last year there were 28 closed sales while this year that dropped to 15. This is where you see the impact of tighter lending standards and housing affordability. 

In the last week, we have seen some improvement and movement in the Jumbo loan market (loans over $416K) and witnessed the first GSE trades in the last 36 days . While these improvements will help the overall housing market, they impact move-up buyers more than first-time buyers.

What does this mean to the average home seller in San Ramon? = If you want to sell your home in a timely fashion, you need to be in the lower half of pricing for comparable homes on the market and in the top third of improvements and features. This is what buyers are demanding. All the marketing and advertising in the world can't sell your house when the one down the street with better improvements and features is priced well below yours. 

For buyers this means = you have more power at the negotiating table. First-time buyers need to know that there are programs still available for them (darn good ones). If you can't find one, call us. Move-up buyers = don't get hung up on the selling price of your existing home. If you move that house, you can leverage the buy side to make a sweet deal that you may not see in San Ramon for some time to come.

For those still wondering when the San Ramon housing market changed = August 15, 2005. Active Listings climbed above Pending Sales.

Weekly MLS Tends for San Ramon can be found here. 

Online narcissism seems to be replacing free food and wine as the number one draw for agent participation. Is Trulia Voices doomed to become just another real estate agent schmooze fest?

It appears that what started out as a great idea on Trulia – Trulia Voices, a venue for the real estate consumer to pose questions to real estate professionals – is becoming just another venue for real estate agents to pose questions to each other in hopes of getting their names in front each other and the Google search engine.

I’ve been following Trulia Voices for some time and I’ve noticed, more and more, that 80% to 90% of the questions being asked seem to come from real estate agents not the consumer. In looking at Trulia Voices home page this morning, there were only two out of 15 entries that came from consumers. It's a shame, I thought Trulia had a great idea, but the situation seems to be an example of how online customers can morph a venue to their needs not business' intent. In this case, it's obvious that the majority of Trulia Voices customers are real estate agents, not consumers.

Will Trulia be able to return Voices to it’s original intent or do they even care? All entries, regardless of who posts them, help to build content on Trulia which helps Trulia build dominance on the search engines. The agents seem to be happy spending their time schmoozing with each other, asking questions they already know the answers to – so why change anything?

If you’re a consumer reading this and you want a serious answer to a serious question in regards to real estate, my suggestion is – find an agent that invests their time talking to consumers, not manufacturing questions for other real estate agents as a means of hoping to get your attention.

The Labor Day weekend is quickly approaching and if you’re planning on making a trip to San Francisco soon, you’ll be out of luck if you try to get there in a car. And just in case you haven’t taken a cue from the lit-up signs on every freeway or in the news, the Bay Bridge will be closed from 8 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. on Tuesday to insert a new earthquake-proof section.

None of this means that San Francisco will be entirely inaccessible. As a matter of fact, lots of more Eco-friendly alternatives will be in service for everyone to use.

BART will be running all through the weekend with trains arriving every hour after midnight at major stations (the schedule is posted on its website). Caltrans is planning to reimburse BART for running during those extra times.

According to the Contra Costa Times, the fourteen locations that will be open all night are Walnut Creek, Concord, Dublin/Pleasanton, El Cerrito del Norte, downtown Berkeley, MacArthur, Oakland City Center/12th Street, Oakland Coliseum/Airport, Bay Fair, San Francisco International Airport, Powell Street, Embarcadero, Daly City, and 24th Street/Mission.

The Alameda/Oakland ferry is also offering more trips between Alameda, Pier 39 and Jack London Square.

You can visit 511.org for more information about public transit options this Labor Day weekend.

- Joseph Natividad

Home sellers in the San Ramon and TriValley areas are starting to experience what much of the country has been experiencing months ago – ya gotta give a little to get a lot. The East Bay has many real estate markets that have fared the housing market storm in good shape, but the continued rennovation in the lending industry is sending ripples through many of the local housing markets once thought to be above the fray.

Housing affordability for first-time buyers and tightening credit standards for all are affecting the local real estate dynamics. Many sellers are just beginning to realize – it’s the market, not the marketing.

Here are some tidbits from around the nation today that help make the point:

Theresa Boardman had this on her St. Paul Minnessota blog today: Recommendations to REALTORS® and their customers:

• Housing must go on sale. (During the boom, sellers got a premium for their properties–that bloom will be reduced in this market.)
• Prices must drop or homes taken off the market in order to reduce the high and rising inventory.
• Buyers are being realistic in their offers…it is the sellers who do not understand three things:
• Their home values increased a lot from 2000-2005.
• They are selling into a falling market so 10% less today is better than 20% less next spring.
• Selling in this market (getting less for their home) permits them to buy in this market (buying for less).

TOUGHER LENDING PRACTICES DAMPEN BUILDER CONFIDENCE – Home buyer skepticism, fueled in large part by tougher mortgage lending practices, is straining builder confidence in the single-family market, according to the recent National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI).

Some notes from Bankrate.com today
These are the times that try the skills of real estate professionals, says Jim Crawford, a real estate coach in Atlanta.

"It's a buyer's market without buyers," he says. "Of the top 40 markets, 36 are down. In Atlanta at this time of year, we should have a maximum of 52,000 homes for sale; we have 114,000. What's happened is, if you can't sell in Chicago, you can't buy in Atlanta. If you can't sell in Boston, you can't buy in Florida."

Here's the squeeze: Rising inventories make it difficult to set — and get — your asking price. Buyers, caught in the same predicament, are reluctant to buy, hoping prices will return to earth shortly.

Dianna Kokoszka, vice president of Mega Achievement Productivity Systems at Keller Williams Realty, says today's buyer wants money-in-pocket value, not frills and playthings. If your home is competing with nearby new construction, be prepared to offer the same or equivalent incentives as the builder.

And, similar to the down market of the late 1980s, home sellers must now compete not only with builders, but with foreclosures, thanks to all those subprime loans you've been hearing about.

"In order for a home to sell once, it has to sell twice: You have to sell it to the Realtors and then the Realtors sell it to their buyers," says Kokoszka.

And from SquareFeet in San Jose this interesting tidbit from July data: The supply of homes for sale in California now is actually greater than for the country as a whole.

 Image by Nick Buxton

The Plaza at Gale Ranch in San Ramon has recently opened up to the public with the introduction of Safeway, its anchor tenant. The estimated $20 million development, located at Dougherty Road and Bollinger Canyon Road, will soon be home to other businesses that include Wells Fargo, Union Bank, Ascona Pizza, Gale Ranch Dental Group, Peet's Coffee and Fat Cactus Bar & Grill.

About 135,000 people live within five miles of the plaza, which is already more than Concord’s entire population. It is worth noting that the average household income in this area is $141,977.

Less than 5 miles away from Gale Ranch is Windmill Farms, which is facing pressure from the Contra Costa Health Department to change the way it has been doing business for the past 30 years. The San Ramon produce market has been selling cut fuits and vegetables along with other prepared foods in a space that is much larger than what is allowed by the county’s open-air codes. Windmill Farms can continue to sell their products as they have been if they create more indoor space and washable floors. If they fail to comply, they may be forced to shut down permanently.

It’s hard to hear of this produce market’s struggles alongside the success that The Plaza at Gale Ranch is destined for. As much as I would love for established, community-loved businesses to thrive, customer safety must be looked at as a priority. I hope that Windmill Farms will be able to resolve its disputes with the county without having to compromise too much of the services it has been providing to the San Ramon area for over three decades.

- Joseph Natividad