The Santa Clara County real estate market has been in a cooling trend, but it warmed slightly in October and appears to be warming again with the January sales so far. Prices are certainly down significantly from the peak pricing a few months back, but sellers will welcome the fact that sales prices are moving upward again. If this continues, we may be revisiting the normal seasonal patterns – which many economists have predicted would be the case.
The average sale price to list price ratio is still at 100.1% for the county, but is under 100% in many areas now. (And when I pulled that from the MLS just now for the first 15 days in January, I see that it has sunk to 99.6%. Days on market, though, shrank from 35 in December to 34 so far in January, interestingly.)
Home Prices in Santa Clara County:
The numbers themselves point to a general movement of values sliding – at least until October, when it ticked up a little, and again here in the first half of January, when we also see upward pricing from sales that went under contract in December. I’ll jot the median sale price for the county here – it’s a large enough pool of sales to be pretty reliable as a gauge of the real estate market in the San Jose area. I pulled this data directly from the MLS:
January 1 – 15 2019 $1,200,000 prices up (so far) 5% from last month
December 2018 $1,145,625
November 2018 $1,250,000
October 2018 $1,290,000 prices up a hair
September 2018 $1,238,000
August 2018 $1,280,000
July 2018 $1,350,000
June 2018 $1,385,000
May 2018 $1,400,000
April 2018 $1,420,000
March 2018 $1,454,000 – PEAK
February 2018 $1,381,000
January 2018 $1,170,000
Between March and July, the median sale price dropped $100,000, or 6.89%. As you can see, it had also jumped considerably between January and March, and even at today’s lower median sales price, it’s still higher than January. It will be interesting to see where it ends up in January of 2019.
Median and Average sale prices in recent years
I think this is really interesting. Most years, both the median and average sale price are lowest in January (I have drawn in the pink or red lines at January for each year), but some years the lowest has been December for the average. This year, though, it looks like both the median and average will be lower in December 2018 than in January 2019. Have a look:
What does that mean? I’m not sure – most years both the median and average hit a low point in January. In a few years, the average hits a low in December while the median is still lower in January. Right now, it looks like both median and average will be lower in December than in January. Are we starting an early spring climb? Maybe so. We’ll have to watch and see.
A quick look at the numbers for this month’s Santa Clara County RE Report:
Trends at a Glance
| Trends At a Glance | Dec 2018 | Previous Month | Year-over-Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median Price | $1,163,000 (-7.0%) | $1,250,000 | $1,293,690 (-10.1%) |
| Average Price | $1,437,380 (-7.1%) | $1,547,350 | $1,556,330 (-7.6%) |
| No. of Sales | 548 (-23.8%) | 719 | 704 (-22.2%) |
| Pending | 528 (-26.3%) | 716 | 515 (+2.5%) |
| Active | 682 (-38.0%) | 1,100 | 271 (+151.7%) |
| Sale vs. List Price | 100.1% (-0.3%) | 100.4% | 109.3% (-8.4%) |
| Days on Market | 34 (+13.0%) | 30 | 21 (+62.0%) |
| Days of Inventory | 37 (-15.8%) | 44 | 12 (+223.3%) |
Please view the online, interactive RE Report here: http://popehandy.rereport.com
Or pull up the four page, printable PDF here: http://rereport.com/scc/print/Mary.PopeHandySCC.pdf
Bottom line, I still think we need to see what happens in February before we’ll know if we are returning to seasonal patterns or not. Right now, I don’t see anything that makes me think we are going into a correction right now.
