For better or worse, perception drives our Real Estate market … as Short Sale inventory from this winter finally begins to close escrow, the market will soon look like a much different place.
This week’s update shows the largest increase in sales yet, and based on the last five years, this has probably been the largest increase in sales that we’ve seen since 2007.
The two hottest markets in Sonoma County? Without a doubt, Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa has added 26 sales to it’s sold column since the last update (two weeks prior), which represents roughly a 30% increase in activity. Another obvious change to this week’s pie charts is the ratio of Short Sales to total sales, you’ll see that short sales represent almost 25% of all sales throughout the county. This isn’t reflective of the amount of short sales active on the market, which still hover under 10%, but this instead reflects the escrow timeline of the transactions themselves. In early February and March there was a noticeably higher amount of short sales on the market … three months later we’re starting to see those transactions close.
To bet, I imagine that short sales as percentage of total sales will continue to remain around 25% for the next 30-60 days, clearing up the winter inventory of those transactions, much of which is still in escrow. Once those transactions close, the market will look like a much different place as many “For Sale” signs in front yards are for homes that are actually in escrow and technically off the market. Perception drives the Real Estate market, for better or worse, and once Trulia or Realtor.com shows only 102 homes available in Petaluma (the actual number of homes on the market) rather than 587 homes (as it is including more than 400 homes under contract), I imagine the skewed picture of our Real Estate “slump” to be corrected.