April Santa Clara/San Mateo/East Bay Housing – Outlook for the Summer Housing Activities

Welcome to our April Housing Market Update! I am very excited because we are going to be talking a lot about what’s going on with all the craziness, and I also want to share a little bit about what my outlook is for the summer. So let’s get started!

First of all, let’s take a look at the Bay Area housing market statistics. As always, we compare last month and this month’s statistics, but what I find very interesting is that the number of closed sales in March 2021 has gone up 51.3% in the single family housing side compared to the previous month, and for condo and townhome, it also went up 30.5%. I wasn’t as surprised that we closed about 43.7% more than last year, because last year in March we were getting closer to the shelter-in-place order, but still, that’s a really astounding number that we had increased from one year ago as well as one month ago. 

Even though we have more sales, it doesn’t mean that the price has come down. The price is still holding up, the median price has gone up from 1.486 million to 1.6 million dollars for single family residence, and for condo and townhome, it went up another $25,000 to $875,000. So if you compare that from a month ago, the pricing had gone up 7.7% on the single family side, and 14.3% compared to last year, while for the condo and townhomes, it had gone up 2.9%, and 10.8% more than a year ago. 

In terms of the active listings, if you look at this chart, and look at the orange line representing new listings in 2019. It was a little bit slow and the price had come down a little bit, the inventory for 2020 actually was really low, and that’s when we saw that the price had gone up quite a bit. But in 2021 the inventory – the number of active listings – had actually gone up more than 2019 and 2020. However, our prices have gone up quite a bit as well. 

Now, how about San Mateo County? On the single family side, the pricing had gone up again to 1.98 million dollars, about 4.2% compared to last month. If you remember, last year while we were doing these market updates, San Mateo County actually had a lot of negative numbers at the time, but as you see, the pricing has come back up already, and also it’s only 20 days on the market instead of 29 days last month, and 35 days the month before. We do have even more sales as well. As for the condo and townhomes, the price had gone up 8.2% from last month up to $920,000, and it’s on the market for 30 days instead of 36 days last month, and 39 days the month before. We also have more close sales but the pricing still went up. The number of closed sales has gone up 22.6%. 

The same chart, similar situation. The inventory in San Mateo County is also higher compared to 2019 and 2020. 

Now, let’s look at the East Bay pricing. Starting in December 2020, almost in every area it has gone up quite a bit throughout the East Bay Area. 

The average days on the market in the East Bay went down to 16 days instead of January’s 26 days and February’s 22 days. While the number of home sales in the East Bay actually came down a little bit starting December through February, it shot back up in March. 

If we look at the sales price in the 880 Corridor areas, a lot of them still have positive numbers besides Albany, where the median price dropped 23%. However, Albany doesn’t really have a large number of sales in terms of unit sales, so the median price may not be reflecting as accurately. But in Hayward, it has gone up 18%, and most of the areas along the 880 Corridor had gone up double digits. 

In the Tri-Valley area, if you look at Livermore, it has gone up 27%, Dublin went up 34% to 1.383 million dollars. All of them pretty much went up above 20%. In the Delta area, Brentwood went up 43%, that’s astounding – the price increased 43% to $815,000. Lafayette has gone up 15% to 1.9 million dollars, Moraga has gone up 29% to 1.982 million dollars, while in the Central Contra Costa area, Clayton went up 15%, Concord 17%, Martinez 19%, Pleasant Hill 25%, and Walnut Creek 25%. As you can see that in East Bay the price also has gone up quite a bit, Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and East Bay Alameda County, they all had gone up double digits, and Contra Costa County as well. However, you can definitely see a much larger increase in the East Bay. They are definitely leading the chart, a lot of places have more than 20% of increase. We also notice that a lot of buyers are moving inland to the East Bay Area from the Peninsula or the South Bay Area, because they are more affordable. That’s what has been driving the prices up. 

Now, let’s take a look at our actual offer situation. We always select a few of our offers to show you what’s been going on in the market, and these are real life situations in the last four weeks or so. 

Willow Glen is actually in the city of San Jose, this is a single family home, the asking price was 1.835 million, they received 6 offers, and then was sold for over 2.2 million, so almost $400,000 over asking price. In Newark, the single family asking was 1.298 million, and they received 3 preemptive offers, and sold for 1.475 million. Pleasant Hill, single family, asking was 1.6 million, but they sold to a cash offer for over 1.875 million, which is about $275,000 more. 

Single family in Union City had an asking price of $899,000, and received 41 offers. As you could tell, when you have such a low price and below one million dollar, people get very excited, and it doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be sold for less than a million dollar. They received 41 offers, and sold over 1.2 million dollars. This is also a reminder for a lot of sellers that in a very competitive market, it doesn’t really hurt to have a lower asking price. I know this is a very common question sellers always ask – are we going to miss out on it if we drop it too low? It depends on if you are in a competitive market, every neighborhood is different, so you have to do a very detailed neighborhood analysis. So I want to remind the sellers that actually, in a seller’s market, in a very competitive market, if you price it too high, that will actually hurt you, so hopefully this could be a good learning lesson and an example to show you. 

Now, in Cupertino, 1.55 million, this is a tear down, but they still received 14 offers, and out of the 14, 10 of them were cash offers. At the end, they sold to a cash offer of over 1.75 million dollars. Then here’s another one, it’s a probate sale, a single family in the San Jose Berryessa area. Probate sales typically require 10% earnest money deposit, and a lot of people get a little bit nervous about that. The asking price was 1.11 million, they received 6 offers, and I know that out of the 6 offers, 4 offers were above 1.4 million. At the end, they sold it for 1.51 million. 

In Los Altos, asking 6.5 million, they actually had quite a few showings, but we noticed that properties above 6 million dollars are not as competitive, believe it or not, anything below 6 million is still pretty competitive. Again, it depends on the area, because if the area is Hillsboro, Woodside, and Los Alto, sales even above 6 million are really competitive. This one did get one cash offer right at asking price. 

Another San Jose Berryessa single family, asking 1.14 million, and they got 16 offers, went over 1.35 million. Again, Willow Glen asking 1.625 million, sold over at 1.85 million. A duplex in Sunnyvale, asking 1.559 million, also received 6 offers, and they closed at close to 2 million dollars. So as you see that a lot of them are multiple offers, also quite a few received over 10 offers. 

Thank you for reading the market update from April! We present a monthly market update during our Bay Area Housing Market Townhall webinar every second Wednesday of the month, be sure to register and get first access to all the updates!