Real Estate News & Market Trends

Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon - CA.

The Alameda & Contra Costa County MLS weekly data for Dublin, San Ramon & Pleasanton. (blue = Active; green = Pending; purple = closed)

With listings returning to the market after the holidays, we see Pleasanton and Dublin active listings have started to trend up. San Ramon continues to decline in active real estate listings.

Pending sales in Dublin and Pleasanton dropped slightly while San Ramon showed a slight increase.

Our office stats show the following for months of inventory on hand:

• Alamo 3.73
• Danville 5.45
• San Ramon 5.73
• Dublin 4.80
• Pleasanton 5.00

The closer the blue and green graph lines come together, the more active the market.

It's impossible to get an accurate figure of Days on Market (DOM) as it is a fairly common practice in the real estate industry to "freshen" (remove from the MLS and re-list) listings if they sit on the market too long. 

We attended both the San Ramon Realtors Marketing Association meeting and the TriValley Marketing Association meeting this week. Both meetings were well attended with many listings being presented.

The general consensus is that the market is becoming more active as buyers move to take advantage of interest rates. Most agents feel that 2007 will be slightly up from 2006.

Real Estate News

Here is my (Brad Inman) summary of takeaways from Real Estate Connect NYC:

1. The trend of declining real estate commissions will reverse this year because there are more listings and fewer Realtors and because the discounters are in trouble as consumers go back to old reliable.
2. Wall St. will introduce new mortgage instruments in an attempt to keep the housing market alive.
3. Woes in the sub-prime mortgage market will hurt liquidity for EZ home loans and will create a minor real estate scandal mid-year.

Countrywide Financial Corp. reported its December and the good news for those looking for evidence that the housing market is picking up was that loan applications were up 11 percent from the same month a year ago.

After bottoming in the fourth quarter of 2006, existing-home sales are forecast to gradually rise through 2007 and into 2008, while new-home sales should turnaround by summer, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of Realtors.

Rates on 30-year mortgages rose this week to the highest level since mid-November after a better-than-expected employment report renewed inflation worries in financial markets.

The Harper Team monitors over 50 Real Estate and News Feeds daily to bring you information pertinent to the San Ramon Valley & TriValley real estate market including the communities of Danville, San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton. We welcome suggestions.

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MLS Stats for Pleasanton, Dublin, Pleasanton

The weekly MLS figures for San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton CA are in (blue=active listings, green=pending sales, purple=closed sales).

What we see is what we expect. The real estate market for San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton is hitting its year-end bottom.

You notice in Dublin pending sales remain stable while they have dipped in Pleasanton and San Ramon. But, in San Ramon, closed sales actually jumped up a bit.

We keep an eye on MLS listings as they expire. In the last couple of days expired listings have fallen off indicating to us that most of the downward movement of Active Listings is complete. We expect to see a rather steep increase by the second week in January as sellers return to the market. 

Our opinion - barring unforeseen circumstances, housing prices in the area are stabilizing and will remain mostly flat for the first half of the year. Sellers entering the market may still have to adjust. Buyers are going to lose the leverage they enjoyed as the market trended down. It will be back to horse trading as usual.

Relevant news items from the end of the week: 

• 30-year fixed-rate loans still remained slightly below where they were a year ago, according to a report today from Freddie Mac.
• "Mortgage rates edged up over the week following news of a jump in consumer spending in November,'' Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac's chief economist, said in a statement. "Financial markets were concerned that stronger spending could keep inflation elevated. These worries were further compounded by the releases of new and existing home sales for the same month, which both exceeded market forecasts and caused Treasury bond yields to continue to rise.''
• The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously owned homes rose 0.6 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.28 million units. That followed a 0.5 percent sales increase in October and marked the first back-to-back sales gains since the spring of 2005.
• Nearly 1 million California homeowners and renters can look forward to a significant reduction in their home and renter insurance rates after a decision by Farmers Insurance Group to slash premium fees in 2007.
• The National Association of Realtors reported that the median price of an existing home fell 3.5% in October from a year earlier, the largest decline since the group began collecting these data in the late 1960s. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage now stands at 6.16%, the lowest level since October 2005, according to HSH Associates in Pompton Plains, N.J.
• First-time buyers are particularly sensitive to rising housing costs, in part because they don't have equity from an existing home they can tap as prices shoot higher. And lower incomes provide less of a cushion when monthly payments climb. In a sign of just how hard it is for first-time buyers to come up with the cash needed to buy a home, 45% of first-time buyers bought their home with no money down, according to the recent National Association of Realtors survey, up from 43% a year earlier.

The Harper Team monitors over 50 Real Estate and News Feeds daily to bring you information pertinent to the San Ramon Valley & TriValley real estate market including the communities of Danville, San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton. We welcome suggestions. 

Search our blog articles via the Tag Cloud - just click on a word that interests you.

Weekly Figures from Contra Costa & Alameda MLS for San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton

The typical end-of-year housing market trend continues for San Ramon Valley & TriValley real estate. Active Listings on the Contra Costa County & Alemeda MLS for San Ramon, Dublin, and Pleasanton, CA continue to decline while Sales Pending remain stable. (Active Listings=blue; Pending Sales=green, Sales Closed=purple)

Most serious sellers will be waiting until after the Holidays to put their homes back on the MLS.

Buyers will have fewer homes to choose from over the next couple of weeks in San Ramon Dublin and Pleasanton, CA. Buyers that need to get into homes may find themselves in a weaker negotiating position with fewer homes in competition.

We expect this trend will continue in the San Ramon, Dublin, and Pleasanton housing markets for the next couple of weeks until we get through the Holidays and sellers start returning their homes to the MLS.

If you would like a more in-depth analysis of the market condition and trends, please contact us. There is no obligation on your part and we promise not to nag, hassle or otherwise pester you.

The Harper Team monitors over 50 Real Estate and News Feeds daily to bring you information pertinent to the San Ramon Valley & TriValley real estate market including the communities of Danville, San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton. We welcome suggestions. 

Search our blog articles via the Tag Cloud - just click on a word that interests you.

San Ramon – Dublin – Pleasanton – Danville, CA

The Associated Press reports - The worst of the housing slump might be over, although some pain is likely to linger, an adviser to President Bush suggested Tuesday. In terms of the crumbling housing market, "most of the action has already played out," Edward Lazear, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters.

Rex Nutting from Market Watch gives us the recent national stats:

• Construction on new homes rebounded in November, rising 6.7% after a whopping 14% drop in October, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Starts fell 8.1% in the West to the lowest level in five years.
• Building permits, considered a leading indicator of the economy and of the housing market, fell 3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.506 million, the 10th straight decline in permits, from October's 1.553 million pace.
• Building permits are down 31.3% in the past year and are down 14.1% in the first 11 months of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005.

When asked to rate the importance of factors that might affect their decision to purchase a specific home, 80 percent said price was the most significant factor. Other considerations included:

• Potential for the new home to appreciate in value, 71 percent
• The prospect of selling their current home at a fair price, 70 percent
• The level of mortgage interest rates, 69 percent
• Personal life changes 60 percent

From Inman News

Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, expects the 30-year mortgage rate to hover around 6.5 percent for the remainder of the year, but climb to 6.8 percent by the end of 2008. Duncan is "optimistic about a rebound" in the housing market next year, citing still-low long-term interest rates, robust capital expenditures, and rising equity prices, among other factors.

Meanwhile, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® expects existing-home sales to slip to just above 6.4 million in 2007 from an estimated 6.47 million this year. But a pullback in construction will spark an 8.7-percent decline in new-home sales to 975,000 from 1.07 million over the same time span.

The President has signed into law a bill making mortgage insurance premiums tax-deductible.

• Mortgage insurance premiums will be 100% deductible for households whose adjusted gross income is $100,000 or less.
• The law is effective for the 2007 tax year on purchase and refinance loans closed on or after Jan. 1, 2007.

Every week we update the local real estate market stats for the communities of San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton, CA.

The Harper Team monitors over 50 Real Estate and News Feeds daily to bring you information pertinent to the San Ramon Valley & TriValley real estate market including the communities of Danville, San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton. We welcome suggestions.

Search our blog articles via the Tag Cloud - just click on a word that interests you.

Pleasanton, CA Real Estate MLS Figures

The weekly stats are in from the MLS for Pleasanton, CA. Active listings on the MLS for Pleasanton (blue line) continue to decline. We see another sharp drop in the last week.

Pending sales (green line) show a slight drop over the previous week.

What can me make of this? Our opinion - considering the time of year - TriValley sellers want to wait it out through the holidays. Expired listings will remain off the market until the first week in January, then we expect to see a sharp increase in active listings while pending sales remain flat. Our advice to sellers who are motivated is - don't hope for improvement in the near future - January will see more competition for buyers returning to the market.

The Harper Team monitors over 50 Real Estate and News Feeds daily to bring you information pertinent to the San Ramon Valley & TriValley real estate market including the communities of Danville, San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton. We welcome suggestions.

Search our blog articles via the Tag Cloud - just click on a word that interests you.