Marin median home price up 23 percent to $1.144M

Written on April 27, 2018. Posted in Uncategorized

Marin Independent Journal

By Keri Brenner

Marin’s median home price reached $1.144 million last month, up 23 percent over the $930,000 median price a year earlier, a real estate data tracking firm reported Tuesday.

The number of new and resale homes and condos sold in Marin dropped 9.9 percent, from 263 homes sold in March 2017 to 237 last month, according to Irvine-based CoreLogic.

Across the Bay Area, prices rose 14.7 percent over the same period. CoreLogic analyst Andrew LePage said the increase “reflects a change in market mix, where a higher share of transactions is occurring in mid- to high-priced markets.”

“Similarly, the March 2018 medians in Marin, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties jumped between 23 percent and nearly 34 percent year over year as a greater share of activity occurred in the higher price ranges,” he said. “That’s at least partly because the inventory of more affordable homes is so limited in those counties.”

Marin real estate brokers agreed that lack of inventory is the not-so-secret reason for both the increase in pricetags and the decline in number of home sales.

“There is an inverse relationship to movement in price and number of homes sold,” said Patti Cohn, of Pacific Union Real Estate in Larkspur. “I believe it is largely a factor of inventory.”

Kathy Schlegel, of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Real Estate in San Rafael, said she was “not surprised at the increase in the median sale price over the year.”

“Inventory is down, so buyers are bidding up the value of homes due to the competition,” she said.

Cohn noted that it was also not surprising that Sonoma County, hard hit by the wildfires last October, was one of the few Bay Area counties where the number of homes sold rose in March — in Sonoma’s case, by 9.7 percent.

“Many people who lost their home in Sonoma want to keep their kids in school there and continue to desire to be in the community,” Cohn said. “Hence, demand for housing and sales up almost 10 percent.”

Schlegel said she is starting to see more bidding wars and multiple offers.

“Although it seems that we have more inventory in April, buyers are still aggressively competing for homes and I expect to see the prices go up even higher this month,” she said. “I have had three closed sales to date in April, all with multiple offers.

“I had 14 offers submitted for a single-family home in San Rafael and seven offers for a townhome in Novato,” Schlegel added. “Both homes sold at a price significantly over asking price.”

Schlegel added that “supply still does not cover the demand for home purchases in Marin. We have a ways to go to close this gap.”

Cohn agreed.

“I am surprised at the level of appreciation, given that we have had a run of six years of rapid appreciation,” Cohn said. “Some of the average increase in sales price is due to the fact that more expensive homes have sold in the past year.”

Most of the other Bay Area counties mirrored the Marin trend of high price appreciation and decline in number of sales, year over year. Sonoma had the highest increase in sales volume, with Santa Clara and San Mateo up only 3 percent and 1.9 percent respectively.

“The February-to-March surge in home sales is a seasonal norm, and although March sales fell slightly year over year, they were the second-highest for that month in the last five years,” LePage said. “Amidst the ongoing inventory crunch, total sales during the first three months of this year fell about 3 percent from the first quarter 2017. “

A total of 7,122 new and resale homes and condos were sold across the Bay Area in March, down 3.3 percent from the 7,362 sold in March 2017.

The total Bay Area median home price rose to $820,000, up 14.7 percent over the $715,000 median a year earlier.