$2,000,000 is the New $1,000,000 in San Carlos.

May 2, 2017

2-mil

If you're a prospective home buyer looking to make 94070 your zip code and you feel as if you're being priced out of the San Carlos real estate market, you may want to stop reading this post right here. Because the news is not pretty if you're on the outside looking in.

OK… You were warned.

The graph below tracks the number of homes that sell every year in San Carlos for $2,000,000 or higher. I started posting it several years ago when it was actually semi-newsworthy when a house sold for over $2,000,000 in our city, and I have dutifully updated it every year. But after years of double-digit increases in San Carlos, we have almost become desensitized to what used to be the holy grail of home prices in San Carlos. Now, it seems as if $2M is the just the ante to start competing for a decent 3 or 4 bedroom home on the west side of San Carlos.

So take a look at these numbers…..

 

You don't need me to explain this to you, but I will anyway.  In 2016, the number of $2,000,000 home sales jumped by 64% from 2015.  That much is obvious, and is a remarkable data point by itself. But the lights really start to flash when you consider that the total number of home sales from 2015 to 2016 only increased by 13%.  What does that mean?

  • In 2015, 42 homes sold for over $2M, or 18% of all homes sold in San Carlos that year.
  • In 2016, 69 homes sold for over $2M or 26% of all homes sold in San Carlos that year.

Or looking at it another way, in 2015 one in every five homes that sold in San Carlos fetched over $2M.  In 2016, it was one in four.  Feeling queasy yet? It gets worse.

So far in 2017, 72 homes have changed hands, and about 25% of those were over $2M. But that percentage will increase as more homes sell this year. Consider the fact that over 33% of the 28 homes that are currently pending sale in San Carlos will close higher than $2M, and we're only 4 months into the new year.  Yawn…….

If you've made it this far in the post, you're obviously thinking, “If $2,000,000 is the new $1,000,000 in San Carlos — then what about $3,000,000?” Because let's face it, $2,000,000 is sooooooo 2015.   But speaking of 2015 and $3M homes, do you think there were any $3M sales back in 2015?  The answer is yes — there were 3 homes that surpassed this mark that year, and in 2016 that number jumped to 13 — or a respectable scary 5% of the total home sales.  And yes, that number will easily be surpassed when we do this exercise again at the end of this year.  3 homes have already closed above $3M, and at least 10% of the homes that are currently pending sale will break that mark.  So perhaps going forward, I will create a chart that tracks $3,000,000 home sales in San Carlos..

So what have we learned today?  Perhaps $2,000,000 is the new $1,000,000 in San Carlos.  And just maybe $3,000,000 is becoming the new $2,000,000?  But one thing is for certain —  nobody really gets excited about a $2,000,000 home sale in San Carlos anymore……

 

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