The 2007 Real Estate Market, so far...
Once again, my Santa Clarita real estate blog has fallen behind. I have been working so don't worry. The problem has not been my lack of desire to keep the Santa Clarita home buyer and seller informed, rather the time it takes when the market has been quite hot and demanding so much of my time!
In 2006 I had nothing but time to blog, not quite true since business was decent, but it sure felt like it at times. Here we are now in 2007, just 3 months completed, and the year has been rocking! Buyer's have indeed lost that ever present 2006 fear of buying a home. They now have courage, and have caught wind that things aren't "so" bad, and they are now buying homes, or at least running us around looking for that home!
I am seeing full price offers made, and in once instance two weeks ago, a home with 5 offers on it in its first week on the market. Why the change year over year? I attribute it mostly to media coverage and people simply tired of renting! Sentiment is everything, and when people are fed news story after news story, either in a paper, magazine, cable news channel, or know it all blog like mine, well, if all that news is negative, who is going to feel good about going against the "advice", especially when it comes to dealing with home buying and selling. Its a good thing that people by nature, want to own real estate, otherwise it would be much less predicatable and more complicated!
Today, we see positive news stories, and much less doom and gloom from pundants. Sure there is uncertainty in the market still, just much less of it. Sure there is fear about the sub prime loan market and how its undoing could effect the mainstream market, I just don't see it effecting the desire to buy a home from the clients I have, or the clients I see my colleagues dealing with on a daily basis.
Bottom line, incase you were wondering, the Santa Clarita real estate market is looking very lively and healthy thus far in 2007. The beginning of the year was looking very promising in that the inventory was remaining at a nice low level after the holidays. It will be interesting to see how the inventory takes shape over the coming months. Currently we are at about 2050 homes actively for sale in Santa Clarita.It is important that inventory stays relatively low, for another dramatic increase like that of 2006, would mean to many options for buyers, which translates into one too many competing sellers. The good news is that buyers have in large number considered or actually got off the sidelines and are starting to participate in the market again. As I mentioned, a lot of that has to do with media coverage and how that has changed. So the larger number of buyers will actually help to eliminate a percentage of the growing "Spring" inventory. I feel that as some sellers realize things aren't so bad out there, they may actually opt to hang onto their asset, and not sell, which is the opposite of what they decided to do in 2006 - when everyone seemed like they wanted to sell!
In the coming months I will provide many more updates here, and do my best to keep you updated on the day to day minutia of the Santa Clarita real estate market. Thanks for supporting this blog by checking it often!
- Robert Mickalson