Bay Area REBlog

Buried in all the election excitement was a very interesting article on Yahoo last week stating that one in five homeowners now owe more than their home is worth….and we’re quickly heading for one in four. Despite the fact that the government has done all it can to spur lending, mortgage rates went up last week and it’s certainly not getting any easier to get approved for a loan. Here in Silicon Valley we are used to making offers with a couple of days for financing contingency removal – well, not anymore….even working with well qualified buyers it now takes about two weeks to remove that contingency…possibly longer depending on your lender.

Here are the single family home sales for September 2007 & 2008. It’s interesting to see that new listings are pretty much the same for 07 & 08, but inventory is dramatically higher this year. Sales in Los Altos & Sunnyvale have actually increased this year over last, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View have remained strong, while Palo Alto has fallen behind with only 23 sales this year compared to 32 last year….it’s also taking a LOT longer to sell a home (CDOM = continuous days on market) and the list price to sale price percentage is well down this year.

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