How does the current real estate market in San Marino compare to last year's market?

We get this question a lot. People want to know how the market is behaving compared to 2007. From speaking with buyers and sellers, it seems the average person's inclination is to believe that the market was much stronger last year, with houses spending less time on the market and selling for a lot more above their asking price when compared to this year. Although many external factors effect how the market behaves, let's strictly look at the numbers and extrapolate from there.

We are going to compare data from the period of 01/01/2007 thru 04/30/2007 with data from the same period in 2008. The following is the 2007 data: (click to enlarge)

The data to focus on is: Listing Count: 44, Average Sales Price: $1,582,709, Average Days on the Market: 50 and Average Sales Price/Listing Price Percentage: 98.65%.

Now let's look at the 2008 data for the same time period: (click to enlarge)

Listing Count: 24, Average Sales Price: $1,528,490, Average Days on the Market: 34 and Average Sales Price/Listing Price Percentage: 100.07%.

So in summation, during our time period: In 2008 there have been 20 fewer listings than 2007, the average sales price has been $53,130 less than that of 2007, the average listing in 2008 has stayed on the market 16 days less than one in 2007 and the average SP/LP% is 1.42% greater in 2008 than it was in 2007.

So what do these numbers tell us? They seem to suggest that the market is basically unchanged for San Marino home sales. The one caveat being that we have been seeing less inventory this year, especially in the beginning of the year; and, because of this, homes are selling faster, an average of 16 days faster. Although the average sales price in 2008 is $53,130 less than 2007, if you remove the highest and lowest sales for each year, the average sales price computes to 1,517,480 for 2007 and 1,516,130 for 2008, a difference of only 1,350 dollars.

Thanks for reading this analysis, hopefully it was helpful. Next week we look at the market in Pasadena.