Santa Barbara Property Sales For Jan 2008

It's a new year and it has started out just where 2007 left off in December.


In the Santa Barbara area there were 92 closed transactions according to C.O.R.T. (Computer Oriented Real Estate Technology) They are a local provider of property information and do a terrific job.

Now back to the numbers, we have had 4 consecutive months of property sales being in 90's. Historically that is a very low number. Seasonally this is the time of year you would expect low numbers.

I'm going to really go out on a limb here and say that we should see some bigger numbers very shortly. Maybe we will climb in to the triple digits in February, but most likely it will be March before that happens.


We have given our chart a bit of a face lift, by adding our escrow officers and marketing representatives information, as well as putting a Santa Barbaraesque photo in the background. You may notice Elissa has been promoted to escrow officer! Congratulations Elissa!


We also have a chart showing the submarkets of Goleta, Montecito, Carpinteria/Summerland, and Santa Barbara as well as information on the North County. Those will be accessible from the links on this page soon.

See You In Escrow!

Property Sales Map January 2008

I have completed the South County map which covers Carpinteria to Goleta in Santa Barbara County.

The map is reflecting all the sales reported by CORT for January 2008.

For 2 months in a row there were under 100 sales in the Santa Barbara area. These sales include all the single family residences and commercial & industrial sales as well as any multi family properties.

The map is actually at the bottom of the blog. I won't post it in the text of this blog as it can make the site load slowly.

Here is a link to it if you would like to view it separately. You can also refer to the links at the right when you need it.

One thing you can do with this map is click on the show list link in the upper left and it will show you a list of the sales prices to the right if you would like to browse the sales that way.

I'll be posting more numbers and statistics on January as we get them as well as the maps for the Santa Maria, Lompoc & Santa Ynez areas.

See You In Escrow!

California Association of Realtors Numbers for Santa Barbara Real Estate

I had the good fortune of seeing Leslie Appleton Young speak in Santa Barbara yesterday and it was refreshing hearing her speakhow she speaks without overwhelming you with economic data. I will be getting a copy of her presentation soon and post some of the useful information she shared. In the mean time I went to the California Association of Realtors website and poked around a little and found some statistics I found useful for December of 2007.

The first was the median home sales price for Santa Barbara, South and North County.

• Santa Barbara County

$492,860 (12/07) $673,080 (11/07) $607,140 (12/06)

• Santa Barbara South Coast

$925,000 (12/07) $1,080,000 (11/07) $1,250,000 (12/06)

• North Santa Barbara County

$323,810 (12/07) $354,760 (11/07) $431,710 (12/06)

The comparison of prices from either the previous month and or the previous year shows a pretty sizable drop. This isn't any huge surprise, although it is affecting those properties on the market that have been listed for a while and haven't adjusted their asking price. If they want to sell they are going to have to chase the market down at this point. The other point to bring up is that there were so few sales in Dec. that it is hard to get a real idea of a true trend.

Below are the exact percentage drops as compared to November and the previous December

• Santa Barbara County

$492,860 (dec 07 price) -26.8% (nov 07) -18.8% (dec 06)

• Santa Barbara South Coast

$925,000 (dec 07 price) -14.4% (nov 07) -26.0% (dec 06)

• North Santa Barbara County

$323,810 (dec 07 price) -8.7% (nov 07) -25.0% (dec 06)

Like I said, these are pretty significant differences, but the amount of sales in Dec 07 as a low going back at least 10 years makes it hard to make any significant predictions on where the market really is.

The January month end numbers have just arrived, so check back soon to see how they turned out. See You In Escrow!