Quick Update: Inventory Data

Just a quick update because I am on Vacation this week, but I still wanted to give an inventory update. Inventory inched up this week, but still remains relatively low. Alameda has 127 units for sale, 81 single family residences.

The numbers show a stagnant market and much has not change. I will have the September sales number for the Island next Monday.

All post this week will be short, so it will be an easy read.

Inventory Data for Alameda 10/5/09

. . 10/5/2009 . Total 127 . 94501 105 . 94502 22 . SFR 81 . Condo 25 . Multi-Family 19 . Short Sale 12 . Foreclosure 9 . Price Reductions 43 . High List $1,899,000 . Low List $269,000 . .

Alameda Snapshot: Antiques By the Bay

Summer is now over and fall has arrived with crisp weather. It is also the first weekend of the month and this means it is times for the Alameda Point Antiques and Collectibles Faire. This is Northern California's largest antiques and collectibles show with over 800 outdoor dealers selling their merchandise on the first Sunday of every month. The Faire is at Alameda Point Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. Everything sold at the show must be at least twenty years old and there are no reproductions allowed.

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."