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!

Santa Maria and Lompoc Real Estate December 2007

The North County Sales showed some signs of life in December rebounding from October and November's numbers. The Santa Maria and Lompoc Real Estate Sales posted a 13% gain in the number of sales from November. If you look at some of the past years, this seems pretty typical in that market. In reviewing the list of sales, there were quite a few bank owned properties selling. Hopefully that is going to help strengthen that market by getting those properties out of the mix of listings that are available. If you focus your attention to the Santa Maria Orcutt sales, there increase over November was 17.5%. This was the highest number of sales in that area since August of this year. It is interesting to note that for December 2006 in Santa Maria there was not an increase in the number of sales as there had been in previous years. Lompoc on the other hand was flat. There were 25 sales in November and December of this year. I'm not quite sure what to make of the Santa Maria and Lompoc Real Estate markets. I do think that shortly people are going to start understanding that the prices are excellent. The really good news for these areas is that many properties can be purchased with a conforming loan. Those loans have excellent interest rates, even though they are a bit harder to qualify for than they were a year or so ago. See You In Escrow!

Santa Barbara Sales Statistics For December

Via the hardworking and ever diligent Gary Woods the statistics for December of 2007 and the entire year have been released from the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors. They are broken down in to 2 sections, one reflecting the information for Single Family Residences and Estates and the other section giving information for the Condominium market. The number of closed sales in December was slow and therefore it is hard to rely on information generated from such a small number of sales, but here it is. Homes and Estates saw 44 sales close with a median selling price of $929,000. This compares to 78 sales and a median price of $1,257,500. Condominiums were off as well reporting 12 closed sales and a median price of $526,000 compared to 29 closed sales and a median price of $635,000 in 2006. These declines are not surprising and the good news is that their appear to be some good buys on the market considering that rates are still good.

The sales numbers for the entire year were not all that surprising either. For 2007 there were 886 closed transactions for the SFR Estates category and the median price for the year was $1,231,750. The median price was probably propped up a bit by since the high end was a larger percentage of the market this year. For reference the 2006 numbers were 913 sales and a median price of $1,190,000. For condominiums 2007 ended up with 354 sales and a median price of $629,000. In 2006 there were 332 sales with a median price of $655,000.

My thoughts on the market are this. The number of listings dropped from 2006 to 2007, interest rates have remained low, and the median price has dropped. I think that smart buyers are going to start getting back in to the market in the next few months. Prices will need to remain low since the inventory is still too high for sellers to be in control. Look for an increase in the number of sales for the year, but we may not see this increase until the market gets a little steam. This could happen sometime between March and May. See You In Escrow!