First Quarter Listings in San Carlos Drop to Lowest Level in a Decade.

April 21, 2015

A Listing Drought.

It seems like the only thing dropping faster than the water levels in San Carlos these days is the inventory of single-family homes for sale. I have been keeping close track of the rate of new listings in San Carlos this year to see if our chronically low level of inventory is just caused by homes selling quickly, or by a lack of new listings — or both.

The chart below is an iteration of the one that I have been posting on the site over the past few months — it shows the number of new single-family listings that hit the market in San Carlos during a particular period of time. The version below captures the data from the first quarter of each year for the past 8 years.

And although it's not in the chart, I did indeed research the same data for 2006 and 2007, and I can safely assure you that Q1 of 2015 will go down in the record books as the lowest number of new listings in the first quarter of any year for the past decade.  That can't be terribly encouraging to home buyers.

Q1 New Listings

Single-Family Home Listings in San Carlos in Q1

 

You may recall that we started off this year like we were shot out of a cannon.  January jumped well ahead of the pace of previous years, which gave hope that this would be the year that we would break out the listing doldrums that we have been in since 2013. But much to the chagrin of home buyers, that pipeline of listings has slowed to a trickle –  not too unlike our water supply in California.

One key reason why there are fewer listings in this ultra-competitive market is that the “transitional” seller has been all but frozen in place – these are the people who would traditionally move within the community, either upsizing to larger house, or downsizing to a smaller one. Because the market so fiercely competitive for buyers, many homeowners are choosing to stay put for fear of selling their home and having nowhere to move to.  So we lose a significant chunk of listings that we used to see when the market was a little less frenzied.

And on top of all that, it sure seems like nobody is in a hurry to leave San Carlos.

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