The San Carlos Real Estate Week in Review: 7-7-12.

San Carlos Real Estate Summary.

Th pace of the real estate market in San Carlos has taken a little bit of a breather now that summer mode is in full swing.  It’s evident from looking everyone’s Facebook postings that many people have gotten out of Dodge for a few weeks.  Those that remain behind are certainly working the market though.  5 more homes went into contract this past week, which pushed our inventory below the 30 mark again.    There’s a significant number of those buyers who are still looking to establish root in their desired school district before the school year starts, so they will remain on task throughout the summer.

Here are the numbers for the week:

By The Numbers.

Below is a high-level snapshot of the market performance for single-family residences in San Carlos. This data is for the week ending 7-7-2012:

>>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
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The San Carlos Real Estate Report for 1H 2012.

It’s Halftime.

Much to the chagrin of those who have not yet planned their summer vacation, or to those who have not yet been successful finding a home to purchase in San Carlos — the first half of 2012 is in the books.  And what a year it has been so far, with some things happening as expected, and others completely unexpected.

I expected (and predicted at the beginning of the year) that 2012 would be a steady continuation of the linear rebound in the San Carlos real estate market that we saw in 2011.  Nothing spectacular – just slow steady growth as the local economy got back on its feet.  But the un-expected happened:  Buyer demand virtually exploded overnight in Q1, as the lure of low interest rates, a strengthening stock market, and a groundswell of consumer confidence got even the most reluctant buyers off the sidelines and into the game.

Unfortunately for these prospective buyers, the landscape was far more competitive than it was just a few months back in 2011.  The surge of new buyers was met with a dearth of new listings, creating an unprecedented imbalance in the market that clearly favored the home sellers.   Consequently, the homes that did make it to the dance in the first half of the year were met with multiple offers and rewarded with some breathtaking final sales prices.    This trend was even a cause de celebre for homeowners who didn’t have their homes on the market, as they watched their equity escalate along with the rest of the market.

So how did the numbers shape up for the first half of 2012? >>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
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Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
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The San Carlos Real Estate Week in Review: 6-30-12.

San Carlos Real Estate Summary.

It’s hard to believe, but the first half of 2012 is now officially behind us.  It has been a year that nobody in this industry could have predicted, and we’re still only halfway through it.  What were the first-half numbers like?  What’s in store for the second half?  We’ll dive into those numbers in a little more detail later this week, but for now suffice it to say that the first half finished the way it started – strong.   And there’s no indication that it’s going to change much in the second half.

Here are the numbers for the week:

By The Numbers.

Below is a high-level snapshot of the market performance for single-family residences in San Carlos. This data is for the week ending 6-30-2012:

>>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
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Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
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The San Carlos Real Estate Week in Review: 6-23-12.

San Carlos Real Estate Summary.

A milestone was reached this week — for the first time in several months, there were as many homes listed on the market as there were pending sale.   If you’ve watched the stats in the table below, you now for much of the year that ratio has been below 1.0, which is uncommon in any market for such an extended period of time.  But this week, we finished up with 36 homes for sale and 36 homes pending sale.  This is a small step in the right direction toward a more balanced real estate market.   Perhaps over the summer months the inventory will continue to slowly build back to a normal level…  We’ll see.

Here are the numbers for the week:

By The Numbers.

Below is a high-level snapshot of the market performance for single-family residences in San Carlos. This data is for the week ending 6-23-2012:

>>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
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Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
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The Nest: Taking the Guesswork Out of Heating Your Home.

The Wave of Home Automation.

One of the benefits of seeing so many homes on a weekly basis is that I get to see some pretty cool technology that people are incorporating into their homes.    Whether it’s a newfangled appliance in the kitchen, or a $100,000 networked home automation system, it’s clear that technology is wedging its way back into our homes again.

But despite all of the promise of efficiency and simplicity that technology offers, not everyone is gung-ho about having it in their homes.   The old VCR is a good analogy – many people owned them, but very few ever figured out how to program them and therefore get the maximum use out of them.   So the challenge for purveyors of home-based technology products is to create things that are:

• Worthwhile,
• Powerful,
• Easy to Use (most important)

Kinda sounds like a commercial for a Mac, doesn’t it?   In a way, yes…

The Nest.

Along those lines, I’m seeing more and more of these cool little Nest thermostats popping up in homes lately.  What makes them so special?  According to their literature, they check all three boxes above.   You see, the normal home thermostat (like the one that’s in my house) looks more like a sprinkler timer for landscaping — switches, and programs, and dials.  The makers of Nest claim that the vast majority of homeowners find their “new” thermostats are too complicated to program, so they don’t.

And if it sounds like an Apple product, that’s not by accident.  There’s lots of Apple pedigree in this company -the founder of Nest came from the iPod and iPhone teams at Apple, so many of the same design principles apply with Nest, too.

How Does it Work?

Rather than me try to explain the magic behind this product, they have a couple of good videos that do it much better:

Anyone Using It?

Is anyone currently using this product?  Are you getting the kind of results that they tout in their videos?  One of the problems that I face is that about 2/3 of my energy bill every month is electric, NOT heating.  So I don’t know how much help this will be for me.  But if you have any experience with it, please share in the comments below.
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Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
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The San Carlos Real Estate Week in Review: 6-16-12.

San Carlos Real Estate Summary.

The $2M street: Saint Francis Way in White Oaks had the distinction this week of having not only one, but two homes sell for over $2M.   Despite the red hot demand, it’s not very often that we see $2M sales in White Oaks – the last time it happened was when 2033 White Oak Way sold for $2,005,000 back in May of 2010.   But this week both 2054 Saint Francis and 1528 Saint Francis closed the same week above $2M — see the table below for all of the details.   This is a resounding statement to the desirability of San Carlos as much as it a testament to the buying power that’s being wielded in this market right now.   As more of the older homes in White Oaks get the type of makeover that these two did, you can probably expect to see more sales in this range down the road.

Here are the numbers for the week:

By The Numbers.

Below is a high-level snapshot of the market performance for single-family residences in San Carlos. This data is for the week ending 6-16-2012:

>>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
_____________________________________________________________________________

Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
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Is the San Carlos Real Estate Market Cooling Down?

The Vibe vs the Reality.

No, I’m not crazy.   But I have sensed a palpable change in the San Carlos real estate market over the past few weeks.  Certainly not in the lack of multiple offers — I was involved in the multiple-bid frenzy on 1600 Elm Street, and the home at 100 Manzanita will be sold today, most likely with a whole slew of offers.  But the break-neck pace of the number of homes changing from “active” to “pending” that we saw back in March just seemed to have ratcheted itself back a notch in the past couple of months.  Back then, just about anything with a “For Sale” sign sold almost immediately.  Now, there are several homes that I thought would absolutely fly off the market that are still for sale.   Hmmm…

This got me to thinking whether my internal compass was just off, or if the market has taken a bit of a breather over the past 60 days.  So when in doubt, I always look at the numbers…because the numbers don’t lie.

The Numbers.

The chart below shows two metrics for single-family residences in San Carlos that are excellent gauges of the activity of the market:  Active Inventory, and Pending Sales.  And both are trending in surprisingly different directions, considering everything that’s happening this year: >>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
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Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
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The San Carlos Real Estate Week in Review: 6-9-12.

San Carlos Real Estate Summary.

If you want to capture the essence of the spring real estate market in San Carlos, just look at this week’s  “Single Family Homes Sold in San Carlos” below:  Of the 8 closed escrows, 7 of them closed above their list price, and it took only took an average of 9 days for these homes to sell.   That’s the definition of a competitive housing market.      But these were homes that went into contract about a month ago — what’s happening with the market now?  Stay tuned this week to the site — the answer may surprise you.

Here are the numbers for the week:

By The Numbers.

Below is a high-level snapshot of the market performance for single-family residences in San Carlos. This data is for the week ending 6-9-2012:

>>> Click Here to Read the Full Post
_____________________________________________________________________________

Are you ready to step up to the most comprehensive data available about the San Carlos Real Estate market? Then subscribe to the White Oaks Blog for free by clicking here. Be sure to follow the White Oaks Blog on Facebook at https://Facebook.com/WhiteOaksBlog , and on Twitter @WhiteOaksBlog.
Get the best coverage on the San Carlos real estate market delivered right to you!
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