Marin in the News

I would have posted this earlier but Blogger is being funky and wouldn't allow me to post. It's a conspiracy, a conspiracy I tell you! Anyway, what caught my attention in this NY Times article were the references to Marin County; so I'm sharing it on this blog.

Some choice quotes:

Many Americans who planned on real estate as their path to wealth are beginning to find that there are limits to how high is up.

Blame market forces. As higher interest rates dampen demand in cities and suburbs that only a year ago were battlegrounds for fierce bidding wars among numerous buyers, sellers are grudgingly lowering their prices to drum up interest.

A house at 57 Marina Boulevard in San Rafael, across the bay from San Francisco, was originally listed at $1.45 million. The owner recently dropped the price to $949,000 when a competing house on the same street lowered its price to $959,000, from $989,000. In Marin County, the prices of about a quarter of all listings have been reduced [true enough, see here; as of yesterday it's up to 27%]. County records show that 57 Marina Boulevard was sold in February for $700,000, so the owner, Dan Marr, is unlikely to lose money even at the lower price, though he may not make as much as he had hoped. "I don't want to talk about it," he said.

It is getting tough out there for sellers. What is happening in Marin County is being repeated in cities and suburbs across the United States. Nearly a year after the sales of homes peaked, buyers are wresting control from sellers in many areas as inventories of unsold homes have grown, in some markets doubling.

It is a slow leak, to be sure. The most widely used statistic to measure home values, the median home price, shows that once-hot markets like San Mateo, Calif., and Mercer County, N.J., are now registering year-over-year declines.

Robin L. McCarthy, a real estate agent who works in Princeton, N.J., said homes were sitting on the market three to four months, when houses sold in as little as a few days a year ago. Houses that would have been the subject of intense bidding wars now sell for slightly less than asking price.

"It's going from a seller's market to a buyer's market," said David Lereah, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

What is rather startling to me is how quickly RE is trending down despite the fact that mortgage rates aren't up all that much (on a historical basis) and the economy is supposedly strong. Some readers of this blog have commented on how great the Bay Area job market is supposed to be. Yet already we hear about price cuts for a large percentage of the houses on the market, inventory is high, price appreciation ranges from weak to flat, and foreclosures are way up. Just imagine what would happen if we were to slip into an actual recession!

The usual caveat: The spring selling season is still young; anything could happen. We'll see...