Thoughts on 2008 for Santa Barbara Real Estate

I was inspired to do a little something on 2008 and or maybe make some observations of my own about 2007 by reading this article from TheXBroker. I would recommend everyone read it. 2008 in Santa Barbara Real Estate I think is going to be the tail of 2 halves, almost like 2007 was but in reverse. The first half of the year is going to be when we see the housing market start to get it's legs under it. The sub prime crisis is going to slowly become less of an issue which will allow us to see fewer foreclosures on the market and create a scenario where buyers are going to start moving again. I think the mortgage meltdown that we have seen is causing some pent up demand that should start showing itself by the second half of 2008. So the first half will be the time where buyers and sellers are figuring out just where the price point is and getting comfortable with those numbers. From everything I'm hearing interest rates should remain low, which will allow properties to keep moving. I am predicting a 5 to 10% increase in transactions with a decrease of maybe 3 to 5% of the median price. I've never made specific predictions before, so let's see how I do. If you are interested in some predictions on what online real estate is going to do in 2008, check out the Future Of Real Estate Marketing. The Daily Sound also had an interesting post on 2007 the year in review. Good Luck in 2008 and 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!

Real Estate Networking, Online

Real Estate Agents and consumers have more and more options when it comes to connecting via the Internet. In the good old days agents would put their listings on their own websites or maybe their companies websites in hopes that consumers would look them up and make a connection with them. Then these listings began to find their way to sites like Realtor.com. Now the listings are being fed to local MLS sites like SBAOR.com and agents can now feed most if not all of the local Multiple listings to their own site through a system called IDX. What next? The last couple of years has seen a huge increase in online networking, Facebook and MySpace are probably a couple of familiar names. The real estate business is also facing the reality of consumers who want to get connected via a real estate networking site before they actually see homes or apply for loans. They have many questions and curiosities that cause them to seek answers. Some of the places consumers are getting answers are sites like Zillow, Trulia, Localism. 2008 will be interesting to see how Real Estate Agents market themselves on these sites as well as how the consumer use these avenues to get familiar with todays real estate market.