This week I am hearing many stories of Santa Clara County houses listed for sale getting 30 or 40 or more offers. Not every offer is good (often it is the overly confident all cash buyer who comes in last place), but many are excellent and the choice sellers face is daunting only because there are so many qualified buyers willing to pay so much for the scarce available inventory.
When looking at the homes which have sold and closed, we do see an uptick in the Silicon Valley realty market, but not as dramatic as what we are hearing on the street, at office meetings, broker’s tour or calls with colleagues in the trenches. So I thought that if we looked at sales week by week, it might tell the story of what’s happening a little better. By the time a home closes escrow, it’s yesterday’s news: that house or condo actually went into contract a month ago in most cases. Even a week by week review of closed sales of houses will be old news to a degree, but when you see week over week, the trend, at least, becomes more apparent.
Have a look – please note that the closings in the first tracked week, which likely represent sales in December, show a cool sale price to list price ratio. A mere week later, though, with fewer sales (and inventory, we can presume) and it’s a totally different story. The change is not a fluke, either, but continues week after week….
And here is how that ratio looks if we graph it:
Where is it going next? The sales happening now, at least many of them, sound stratospheric. Is this what we’ll be seeing in March’s closings?
This week’s selling is next month’s news.
