San Carlos Real Estate Report Card: April ’09.

Keeping its distance…

April is one of the first full months of the spring buying season in a given year.  You tend to see the number of homes sold start to rise steadily from now until July, and then it normally drops off in the summer months.  Even though 2009 is a down year, it shows promise of following this same model.

Compared to San Carlos Q1 Report Card,  the number of homes sold this past month actually increased enough to close the gap slightly from 2008;  last month the YTD gap for home sales stood at 34% , and now we’re only 24% behind 2008.   But average and median home prices lagged at about the same distance behind 2008.  Why?  Because homes in the sub $1M range are making up a bigger percentage of the sales this year — last year they accounted for 44% of the sales YTD…now it’s a full 60%.

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April ’09 vs ’08

Here’s the data from April ’09 compared to the same month in 2008:

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YTD Sales Figures Through April ’09

And here’s the report card as it stands for the first four months of the year…

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Looking Ahead…

We have talked in the San Carlos Week in Review series about how the sub $1M price range is starting to “bounce”…i.e. homes are selling more quickly, and much closer to asking price — often times with multiple offers.  This phenomenon won’t start to show up until the May/June sales data as these homes are only now starting to close escrow.

The net result is that you should start to see the Days on Market (DOM) drop, and perhaps the unit volume gap continue to close.  However, since the majority of homes that are selling are below $1M, average and median prices will continue to lag well behind 2008.

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1. San Carlos Real Estate Report Card: May ’09.
2. San Carlos Real Estate Report Card: October ’09.
3. San Carlos Real Estate Report Card: November ’09.
4. San Carlos Real Estate Report Card: 1H’09.
5. San Carlos Real Estate Report Card: July ’09.