April didn’t exactly knock it out of the park for the single-family home market, a surprising discovery given the way values are trending upward for condos.
Possible explanation? House prices are leveling off, which wouldn’t surprise me given that our average single-family home price in the first quarter was $1,970,733. The ongoing interest rate hikes and tech layoffs may be dampening buyers’ enthusiasm for throwing money at houses.
Here’s the latest on how the house market did in April:
Volume check: Year-over-year (YOY) volume is down 33%. Buyers snapped up only 163 houses compared to 245 in April 2022. But volume ticked up slightly from March’s 148 homes sold.
Median price: April underperformed, with a $1,575,000 median price. That was a 23% YOY drop, and a seven percent dip from March. This tells me that there’s demand for houses, but buyers may not be on board with paying sky-high prices.
$1.5M is the new $1M. There isn’t a lot of inventory selling for $1M or less, a price point I referenced over the years for more affordable housing in San Francisco. However, half of all homes sold traded for $1.5M or less. Neighborhoods in this price range were in the southeastern end of town such as the Outer Mission, Excelsior and Crocker Amazon, as well as Ingleside, and smaller homes in the Sunset and Richmond.
Overbidding was pretty common. 100 of the 163 April closed sales changed hands for over the list price, and 34 closed for 20%+ over asking. Many of these homes in the latter category were concentrated in the Sunset and Parkside for up to $2M.
Forest Hill brings it in. Buyers quickly responded to the Mediterranean-style home at 216 Magellan, which featured three bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms across 2,125 square feet and was listed for $2,395,000. The home went into contract in less than a week and sold for $3,125,000—30.5% over asking.
But Sea Cliff didn’t win any awards. Things didn’t go as quickly for 9 25th Avenue in Sea Cliff. Perched on the bluffs and listed in March 2022 for $32M, the sale closed last month for $20M. (Photo courtesy Compass)
Luxury buyer volume flatlined in April. Closed sales in the $3M+ range were similar in volume to that of March. 26 sold and almost half went into contract within two weeks. Buyers paid all cash for 31% of them.
Inventory check. There were 324 homes on the market as of this writing at a median list price of $1,949,000, and roughly 154 were in contract.
Pro Tips
Sellers: If your house has been on the market for two weeks or more without any serious interest, it’s likely that you’re priced a bit too high for what you have to offer. Give it another week and consider reducing the price to drum up buyer interest.
Buyers: You’ll generally have company when you’re bidding on a single-family house in San Francisco, as houses are the most popular and desirable property type here. Make sure you have a firm grasp on values based on comparable sales from (ideally) no farther back than six months.
[All data courtesy of the San Francisco Multiple Listing Service.]