What Numbers To Believe

I get all kinds of emails, from a variety of real estate sites, and I use most of them to formulate how the Alameda real estate market is performing. Many of the websites have great information and data and some well I hit the delete button.

The one website that continues to confuses me is Zillow. They have become extremely popular for the common person to track the value of their home. Reporter now use Zillow for all kinds of stories from the value of a house that suffered fire damage to mortgage data. I have always used Zillow's data as a guide but never fact and this is why.

In their most recent email they wrote that the median home price in Alameda is $625,000. The first issue I have is the time period they are talking about. I can only guess they mean September 2009. But the month was not over and my early numbers put the median around $568,000; that is a 9 percent difference. The last time the Island saw $625,000 or more median home price was April of 2008. The median only exceed $600K one month in 2009, April.

I guess my beef with Zillow is the home valuation, they always seem to be way off. Either high or low, because their secret formula does not account for local factors. The computer does not value physical, economic or social boundaries that can increase or decrease a property.

If you are bit of a numbers geek when it come to real estate Zillow has a more data than most sites.

Zillow does have a bunch of nifty and one of my favorite's is charts Homes Sold For A Loss. I guess that they use outstanding mortgage balances and compare them to the sale price. According to Zillow nearly 26 percent of homeowners sold at a loss for the month July. This stat does not seem out of line given the declining home values.

The take away is use any website as a guide, even 94501 Real Estate, because the market is fluid and the numbers change. The best opinon is the one you formulate from a collection of information. As Mark Twain wrote in his Autobiography:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and
statistics."

Alameda Bucks National Trends

Most of us know that Alameda is a different place to live and in the Real Estate world it does not follow state or national trends.

On Friday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), reported home sales moved up in July, both the Bay Area and the nation, even though locally Alameda saw sales decline both month-over-month and year-over-year for the month.

The NAR is reporting sales are up for the fourth consecutive month. The Association show that sales were up 5 percent in July from a year ago to a seasonally adjusted 5.24 million units. Nationwide, it said, there is a 9.4-month supply of inventory for sale. A healthy market has about seven months of supply, so buyers still have a lot of inventory to select from in the market.

Based on yesterday’s Alameda Inventory numbers the Island has four months of inventory. The Island has been in the real estate doldrums as inventory has been depleted and sales have been slow the entire year.

DataQuick also released a report on Friday, they reviewed the nine-county Bay Area, that showed the median price for a home the Bay Area climbed month-over-month June's $360,000 median rose to a median price of $408,250 in July a 13.4 percent increase. The bad news is the median is still down 15.8 percent from a year ago when the median was $485,000.

Alameda saw a dip in the median from $599,000 in June to $582,000 in July, a three percent decrease. The year-over-year median price decrease was nine percent.

Inventory for foreclosures and low priced homes has dropped creating bidding situations. The result is intense competition for homes under $300,000 throughout the Nation driving prices up.

Alameda continues to buck the National trend in many ways, except for declining prices.

Alameda Inventory Data

. . 8/23/2009 . Total 153 . 94501 122 . 94502 31 . SFR 101 . Condo 28 . Multi-Family 22 . Short Sale 13 . Foreclosure 10 . Price Reductions $64 . High List $1,987,000 . Low List $224900 .

Alameda is Just a Little Different

The SF Gate has run an article the last two day on the home page about how homes sales in the region have soared as prices have dropped. This action is predictable; as people start seeing value and opportunity they will jump into buying. It the marketing world we are teased daily with terms like close-out, liquidation, going-out of business sales and in the home resale market the equivalent is foreclosure.

For those who live in Alameda, or for those looking to buy, the housing market continues to see smaller fluctuations than that of the San Francisco Bay Area Region, the East Bay or Alameda County. I took a look at the overall sales in Alameda and since October 2008 foreclosures accounted for 13% of the sales. For all 2008, foreclosures were just under 7% of all sales.

These are not even close to the numbers reported by the Chronicle:

“Fully half of all existing homes sold in the Bay Area in December were foreclosures unloaded by banks at fire-sale prices. Those sales sent median prices tumbling to new lows and attracted droves of buyers, according to a real estate report released Wednesday.”

The large portion of these buyers is investors looking to build portfolios.

The other reported data point was concerning the drop in Median sale price.

“Every Bay Area county experienced double-digit declines in the median price. The annual drops for existing homes ranged from 11.8 percent in San Francisco to 48.4 percent in Contra Costa County.”

The change in median home sale price in Alameda from December 2007 to December 2008 was about 5%. In month of December the 2007 median sale price was $580,000 and in 2008 it was $560,000.

The numbers in foreclosure heavy areas have depressed the overall number in the region, but it appears for now that Alameda is seeing a decline sales volume and relatively low foreclosure activity.