Forgoing The MLS.

If you read the Real Estate Week in Review series on this blog each week, you may have noticed an inordinate number of “off-market” home sales that have been logged in San Carlos since the beginning of the year.  I did some digging through the MLS sales statistics and the San Mateo County records and found an interesting stat:  In the month of January, nearly 50% of the homes that sold in San Carlos in the month of January were never listed on the MLS.  In a normal market in San Carlos, that number rarely gets even near 10%.

With a market that has been on a hot streak for 10 years and counting, sellers have traditionally opted to fully expose their home to the market by putting it on the MLS, and then letting the white-hot demand drive up the price. Websites like Redfin, Zillow, Trulia and countless others who subscribe to the MLS data feed then republish the listings on their own websites, effectively replicated that exposure many, many times over. It's this formula that is largely responsible for the parabolic rise in home prices in San Carlos over the past decade.

So why are sellers suddenly eschewing the MLS?

Everyone has their own reason for deciding to sell their home off-market, but the desired result is that they simply don't want everyone in the world trudging through their house.  As I wrote in this post nearly four years ago, people opt to sell off-market for one or more of these three reasons:

1. Privacy.  Unfortunately, people have to sell their homes as the result of unfortunate or unplanned occurrences such as death, divorce, or financial distress.  Selling off-market helps limit the exposure of their circumstance.
2. Convenience.  It can often require a monumental effort by the seller and the listing agent to prepare a home for sale, and then to endure the inconvenience that comes with making the house available to show during the listing period. Sometimes the convenience of a quick, quiet sale is more important than getting broad market exposure.
3. Premium.  During the height of the housing boom, multiple offers were almost a certainty for any home.  Sellers soon realized that buyers may pay a significant premium over their asking price just to avoid the psychological drain of repeatedly losing out in competitive bids.  Today, I think buyers have become more savvy to this motivation, and are often willing to wait until the home hits the market — especially if the seller's off-market expectations are simply too high.

What Does This Mean?

While it's still not clear why so many sellers are steering clear of the MLS this year, one thing is definitely certain:  If you're not working with a Realtor who is intimately plugged into the San Carlos market, you're simply going to miss out on these opportunities.  When a listing agent is instructed to sell a home off-market, they have resort to the “old-school” method of getting the word out, and that's usually calling or emailing other Realtors who do lots of business in the area, since they are the ones most likely to have a qualified buyer.  If you're working with an agent who is not from the area, or if you're a “free-agent” buyer, you're simply not going to see this growing segment of the market.

I recently found an amazing off-market opportunity in San Carlos that was so limited in exposure that only two parties wrote offers on it.  If you want to get the total picture of the San Carlos real estate market, and not just what you see on your phone, I'm one of the most qualified Realtors to make that happen for you.  Between my intimate knowledge of the local market, my connections to the off-market channels, and the backing of the largest database of “coming soon” listings through Compass, you simply can't get a better insight into what's happening in San Carlos.

All you need to do is contact me!