April 30, 2010 was the deadline for the federal home buyer’s credit – if someone wanted to take advantage of it, he or she had to be “in contract” on residential real estate by the end of April.
Did it create a buying frenzy in Silicon Valley?
Not really. The numbers across Santa Clara County were very similar in April as they were in March. In March it was 946 closed houses & duet homes and 325 condos and townhomes. In April we saw 932 and 291. Cumulatively, it was down a little from March. And generally that’s what it seemed like, too, in the trenches: just slightly cooler.
Here’s a look at the numbers* with some historical perspective going back to 1998. I ran these numbers myself on MLSListings.com and have made every effort for accuracy (but cannot guarantee it). Our MLS will come out with official stats in a few more days – until then, consider this a “sneak peek” care of Mary Pope-Handy:
Looking at the last 13 years, it’s easy to see that 2010 wasn’t especially active. It should cause the reader to wonder, though, what would have happened without the stimulus of this buyer program, though, and also ponder if there will be a change one it’s expired.
Here are the same numbers, and the averages over the last 13 years, without benefit of a graph:
As you can see, our sales for April 2010 are far less than many years, and off about 20-30% from an “average” year in recent history.
What will May bring? I am not sure, but I am glad that now we have the California state home buyer’s credit – and hope it will help.
*The areas used for this post were the MLS areas 1-23 plus the MLS areas for Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto. Some of “area 23” is in Santa Cruz County by 99% of these ares lie within Santa Clara County.
