San Carlos Sees a Bump in New Listings in Q1.

April 12, 2017

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Yes, you read that headline correctly. Despite what seemed like another quarter of the same old business of ridiculously paltry inventory of homes to choose from in San Carlos, we actually experienced a fairly significant increase in new listings in the first quarter of 2017.

Well, sort of….

First of all, it depends on what type of home you were looking for. Single family homes indeed experienced a year-over-year increase in new listings this quarter; condos and townhouses did not. The chart below shows the details:

 

The number of new listings for single-family residences in San Carlos actually jumped by 18% over 2016. For anyone that has been shopping for a home in San Carlos this may seem hard to believe, since it seems like there are never more than 10 homes on the market at a given time. But the second part of this story puts the sequential increase into proper perspective.  The first quarter of last year ultimately proved to be the leanest Q1 for single-family homes of any that I could dig up over the past two decades. We literally hit rock bottom at this time last year with only 57 new listings. So beating this mark is actually less newsworthy than it would have been had we fallen short of it, since the bar was already quite low. In the grand scheme of things, 67 new listings – while still a nice bump over last year — is still a low number by historical perspective. In fact, it's the second lowest number on record after last year. But hey, it's progress for home buyers.

Condos and townhouses seemed to behave in an opposite manner. After locking in the strongest Q1 in the past 5 years in 2016, the number of units that hit the market in the first segment of 2017 dropped precipitously — almost tying the low mark of the past few decades. This bipolar behavior is quite interesting – it's too early to judge whether it's just a blip, or truly a trend going forward.

The big question on everyone's mind is how has this change in the rate of new listings impacted the pricing on homes in San Carlos? Are prices down, up, or flat?  Tune in tomorrow for the next post in this series — I will have all of those answers in another very revealing chart.

 

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