Part of Alameda Real Estate Swimming

Happy New Year's Eve to all those who love to real about Alameda Real Estate, even on the last day of 2008.

I found this widget on SF Gate about homes that are Under Water. According to Zillow who powers the data, 13-14% of Alameda homes are now worth less than what people owe in their mortgage. So of the 14,561 owned properties in Alameda that is roughly 1,890 to 2,039 homes in the market.

The bigger number was 21.2% of homes in 94501 and the 18.4% in the 94502 that were sold at a loss.

See the SF Gate Data Center has a lot of cool data: http://www.sfgate.com/data/

Have a Safe and Happy New Year

Bad News in Residential Housing Continues

The news does not get any better with housing, even on the second to last day of the year. After the holiday I will take a closer look at how today's report is reflected in the Alameda Residential Housing market. But the synopsis is: The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 10-City Composite Index was released today and it showed a plunged 19.1 percent from a year ago, the steepest declines in 20 years of available data. The 20-city index declined 18 percent.

Read the SF Chronicle Story:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/30/BUBJ15147U.DTL&tsp=1

Alameda Real Estate December Sales

The month and year have one more day and a leap second, but I thought I would get the preliminary Alameda home sales data out early with the New Year's Day Holiday. Enjoy the next couple of days, I will with all the football the next two weeks, updated December sales will be published second week of January. Last chance to take the 94501 Real Estate Survey Click Here to take survey

Alameda Sales Data -- December 2008

DATE	ADDRESS	ZIP	BED	BATHS	SELLING PRICE
12/2	3032 FLORA VISTA	94502	3	2	$      430,000
12/3	2233 SAN ANTONIO AVENUE	94501	4	1	$      715,000
12/3	1101 COLLEGE AVE	94501	4	2	$      770,485
12/5	983 PEARL ST	94501	4	1	$      630,000
12/5	1433 MORTON ST #B	94501	1	1	$      202,000
12/8	214 CHINABERRY LANE	94502	3	2	$      545,000
12/9	1828 -1830 BUENA VISTA AVE	94501	4	3	$      510,000
12/10	1823 ENCINAL AVENUE	94501	0	0	$      560,000
12/10	3447 HAZEL LANE	94502	3	2	$      525,000
12/10	2826 FERNSIDE BLVD	94501	3	1	$      665,000
12/10	316 HAIGHT AVE	94501	3	2	$      605,000
12/11	1829 ENCINAL AVENUE	94501	4	2	$      620,000
12/11	36 SEA BRG	94502	3	2	$      740,000
12/11	933 SHORELINE DR #407	94501	2	2	$      429,000
12/11	20 WELLFLEET BAY	94502	4	2	$      765,000
12/11	140 JUSTIN	94502	4	2	$      750,000
12/11	352 OLEANDER AVE	94502	3	2	$      565,000
12/11	261 BRYANT AVE	94501	4	2	$      750,000
12/11	3277 ENCINAL AVENUE	94501	2	1	$      525,000
12/12	1333 WEBSTER ST #A309	94501	0	1	$      144,500
12/19	3423 CATALINA AVE	94502	3	2	$      400,000
12/24	202 CYPRESS STREET	94501	2	1	$      230,000
	Median		3.00	2.00	$    562,500
	Average		2.86	1.64	$    548,908

 

Quick Alameda Real Estate Post

With all the Holiday activities I had very little time for today's post so here is the weeklyAlameda Real Estate  inventory report for December 29. The home inventory continues to decline, down seven units from a week ago.

Alameda Inventory Data

Data Pulled December 29, 2008 at 9:00 AM

Total Units                                 157

94501                                       124

94502                                       33

Single Family Residences          84

Condominiums                           42

Multi-Family                              31

Foreclosure                               12

Short Sale                                 21

Price Reductions                       56

Highest Price Listing                  $1,995,000

Lowest Listing                           $179,900

Alameda Snaphot:Main Streeet Alameda

A snapshot of the Bay Bridge looking across Alameda Point towards San Francisco. Hope everyone had a good Christmas and a have a great weekend.

Merry Christmas

For Thanksgiving I posted a YouTube video of the movie "Holiday Inn" starring Bing Crosby, Majorie Reynolds and Fred Astaire. So in keeping with that theme, here is another scene from that movie: White Christmas.

Christmas Sale: Alameda Real Estate

The Alameda Residential Real Estate market currently has 30 homes (single family residence) that have implemented a price reduction in hopes getting that house sold during the holiday season. Discounts from the original list price range from 2 to 33%. So as you look at all those retail holiday bargains take a look at what Alameda Real Estate has to offer. Here are the top three:

609 Haight -- This two bedroom and one bathroom, 1,473 square foot home has been on the market for 308 Days. the orginal list price was$595,000 and now is discounted 33.28%.

Current Sale Price: $397,000

417 Page -- This three bedroom and two bathroom, 1,954 square foot home has been on the market for 355 Days. the original list price was$835,000 and now is discounted 22.16%.

Current Sale Price: $650,000

409 Shellgate -- This is a short sale. A three bedroom and two bathroom, 1,504 square foot home has been on the market for 76 Days. the original list price was$599,000 and now is discounted 16.69%.

Current Sale Price: $499,000

The full list:

2008 Alameda Sales Data

With the month and year coming to a rapid close I thought I would take a look at Alameda sales for the year. You can see that 2008 started slow and picked up pace in April and peaked in July. This is a typical pattern for sales. But from the Summer on, as the mortgage crisis built, the second half of the yearsaw a continuing decline in sales, the only anomaly was October. 

I also wanted to take a look at median home sale price verses average home sale price. The data looks very similar with the average not been much higher than the medium. This tells me that bulk of Alameda's inventory is mostly priced between $600,000 and $650,000. You can see that both the medium and average also declined in the later part of the year.

Charts reflect 444 Alameda sales reported through the MLS from January 1 to December 20, 2008. I will update the final December sales data and these charts in the second week of January.

The Island is Flat

On Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that home values have plummeted to an eight year low to a median home price of $350,000 down 47.8%. It is obvious to say that that is a huge decline, but here in Alameda it appears that the market has held up well over the last year.

I took a look at the Average Listing Price on Island in 2007 verses 2008, and it shows that prices that sellers are asking are slightly down, but overall fairly flat. The main Island saw a 5% decline in the asking price. The average of the actual sales price almost mirrored the listing price where buyers were paying between 97-99% of the list price.

The numbers show that Alameda has been holding up over most of the region. Alameda has taken its hit with 20% of the current listings in foreclosure or short-sale, but it does not compare to what is happening in Oakland (744 foreclosed homes, 35% of listings), Richmond (416 foreclosed homes, 46% of listings), and in far east Contra Costa County in Brentwood, Oakley, Antioch and Pittsburg (1,027 foreclosed homes, 47% of listings) that have staggering numbers of foreclosures. The distressed property, foreclosures and short sales, have pushed the median price down and this pushes the entire real estate market down.

The most distressing number is the number of listings sold from 2007 to 2008. It is very bad news, if you are a Realtor or the Alameda City Council looking forward to an increase in revenue the Property Transfer Tax will bring in for next years budget. As of December 15 the numbers of transactions are down 56%.

Alameda three largest brokerages, according to their websites, have 146 real estate sales people, add in an estimated 60 more agents at the other brokerages and that is a lot of people scrambling for deals. The dirty math is 884 sides year to date which means a little over four transactions per agent if every deal stayed with a local person. These are very tough numbers for those toiling in only Alameda Real Estate.

I will not do the math for the City, but I am sure that the impact is very similar.

Here is the breakdown of 2007 to 2008. Scroll further down for the weekly inventory numbers and remember the 94501 Real Estate Survey.Click Here to take survey

 

2007
Zip	No. of Listings	Ave. Listing Price	Ave. Sale Price	%
94501	725	$      660,557.95	$   651,533.09	99%
94502	273	$      701,463.25	$   690,676.66	98%
2008	As of 12/15
Zip	No. of Listings	Ave. Listing Price	Ave. Sale Price	%
94501	327	$      624,797.29	$   610,460.10	98%
94502	115	$      704,016.45	$   686,154.43	97%
Year-Over-Year Changes
Zip	No. of Listings	Ave. Listing Price	Ave. Sale Price
94501	-55%	-5%	-6%
94502	-58%	0%	-1%

 

Alameda Inventory Data

Data Pulled December 21, 2008 at 10:00 AM

Total Units                                 164

94501                                       129

94502                                       35

Single Family Residences          90

Condominiums                           43

Multi-Family                              31

Foreclosure                               11

Short Sale                                 22

Price Reductions                       59

Highest Price Listing                  $1,995,000

Lowest Listing                           $179,900