Everybody has their ideal dream home in their dream city. Some yearn for a white picket fence in a quiet suburb. Others love the hustle and bustle of a New York apartment. San Francisco, the city by the Bay, has a little of both which may be why the number of homes for sale has since ticked up another 4 percent from a previous low. The new high is around 920, which is 10 percent more homes on the market than at the same time last year. The number of single family homes on sale is hovering around the same number as last year where while the number of condos on the market (650) is up 15 percent with the list price for 23 percent of the condos on the market having been reduced at least once. [SPONSORED]
Best S.F. Realtors
Best San Jose Realtors
Best SF Property Managers
Commercial Real Estate Brokers
Best Rental Realtors
Fortunately for realtors and bankers, expensive homes are up relative to last year, especially homes listed for more than $1 million. The share of views to homes listed for less than $300,000 shrank by 4.7 percentage points this year, while the share of traffic to homes listed between $300,000 and $1 million rose 3.3 percentage points. Traffic to listings above $1 million picked up the other 1.4 percentage points of traffic share. For renters, the metros that saw urban rents shrink the most compared to suburban rents are: Memphis (difference of 3.6 percentage points), Dallas (3.2), Sacramento (3.0), San Francisco (2.7), and New York (2.5).
Housing inventory, or the number of homes on sale, within the city of San Francisco proper has skyrocketed by 96% since February, wildly different from similar housing markets like Miami, Boston, and Washington, DC. That spike in the central city hasn't been matched by a shift in homes on the market elsewhere in the San Francisco metro area.
This, according to Zillow, is largely due to many of residents trying to sell their houses without a commensurate increase in buyers. Quite a shift for someone who has lived San Francisco since 2013 where sellers held onto their homes like their property was the Holy Grail. There are a multitude of theories and reasons why recent San Franciscan home owners are trying to sell, one being simply to be less crowded. The big jump in homeowners trying to sell in the city proper is consistent with an upswing in people looking for homes in less densely populated parts of northern California. Will that change when more and more people get the COVID-19 vaccine and again yearn for city life in San Francisco? Maybe.
California Policy Lab reported an exodus of residents during the coronavirus pandemic, with the net number of exits increasing 649% in 2020.
They also stated, "Although net migration to the Bay Area and San Francisco has dropped since this time last year, most movers appear to be sticking close to home, with approximately two-thirds of San Franciscan movers remaining in the Bay Area economic region and nearly 80% remaining in the state."
Safe to say, previous residents didn't go far.
