San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble #8 - 12/2/2007 to 12/16/2007 Plus Huge Update on October’s Troubled Homes

The winter isn’t very chilly in San Mateo, but the real estate market is almost frozen. Surprisingly these two weeks there were more listings than the last two weeks and I managed to find about 240 new listings, and of these 18.3% qualify as homes in trouble. Lets take a look:

Total Count of San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble for 12/2/2007 to 12/16/2007: 44

Average Time from Last Sale Date: 1.52 Years

Average Annualized Loss: 14.9%

Average Size of Home: 1173

Average Price Per Square Foot: $492

Biggest Loser: 2491 Rowntree way with an annualized loss of 60%

It seems that a lot of these homes are REOs or short sales and the banks are getting anxious to get rid of them. Anyway, data on these homes are available at the statistics page. The average price per square foot is still extremely high. Since this new data is not extremely interesting I decided to look back at some of the older reports. I examined the approximately 150 homes from the first two reports listed here and here and the findings are quite interesting.

Update of Homes Listed in Report #1 and Report #2 Including Homes Listed Up to 10/21/2007

Total Number of Homes: 144

Homes Still on Market: 100

• Price Increased: 3
• Price Further Reduced: 53
• Price Stayed the Same: 44

Homes Off the Market: 44

• Sold: 9
• No New Sales Information/Withdrawn: 35

It is interesting to see that three homes actually increased their listing prices because these homes have been on the market for months. What makes them think that raising their price would make their home sell? The home at 123 Fey in Burlingame was relisted so it doesn’t seem like it has been on the market for that long and it increased its price by 1000.

The good news is that a majority of sellers are coming to their senses and reducing their prices more. Some of the biggest reductions are $100,000 or more. Some examples are:

• 3550 Carter Dr #139, 480,000 in October to 380,000 today
• 3570 Oak Knoll Dr, 889900 in October to 789900 today
• 1363 Windmere, 649,000 in October to 499000 today

It was surprising to me that only 9 of these homes have sold for sure. At this rate it would take another 10 months or so to sell the remaining 100, and more homes are being listed every day. Of these 9, only one went for more than asking price, the other eight homes sold for anywhere from 2% to 10% less than asking! So if you like any of these distressed homes it doesn’t hurt to ask for more of a discount because it seems very tough to sell them. Since October 21st I have recorded almost two hundred of these distressed properties and at the snail pace they are selling I estimate there are 300+ of these home sellers in trouble in San Mateo right now. I think we’re nowhere near the bottom. I find it funny that Redfin has a real estate tip that says “wait for foreclosures in your neighborhood is off the market, and then sell your home”. In our current situation we would have to wait a very long time for all of these properties to get off the market.

Anyway, the raw data and past issues are available at the statistics page. The next issue will appear in 2008 since I will be on vacation. Enjoy!

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