“Hundreds of homes in Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco sold for at least $100,000 over the asking price between Jan. 1 and Feb. 15,” NBC Bay Area reports. “The breakdown by number of homes sold for six figures over asking has the three Bay Area cities in the top five nationally.”
You can laugh that houses being expensive in the Bay Area is an evergreen headline, and why are we even bothering to report this as news. (And yes, Redfin is a real estate brokerage, and they do have an incentive to normalize the highest possible high home prices.) But the reality is that even here in the Bay Area, house prices did briefly plummet during the pandemic, even if San Francisco has long had a reputation for homes being strategically listed well under what they're worth to create bidding wars.
The pandemic may not be over, but any decline in home prices is — and in some areas, home prices still went up as people relocated during the pandemic. Redfin notes that “January was the most competitive month on record nationwide” for real estate purchases, thanks to low mortgage rates.
"Mortgage rates are up from where they were at the end of last year, and will likely continue to rise," Redfin's chief economist Daryl Fairweather told NBC Bay Area. "And that will make borrowing to buy a home more expensive. I think part of the reason we’re seeing a rush to buy a home is people want to get ahead of those rising mortgage rates, but over time, they will go up and they will start to put a dent in demand."
NBC Bay Area lists several major cities, and the percentage of homes going for $100,000 or more over asking in the following bullet point list.
- Los Angeles: 718 (11.3%)
- Oakland: 580 (29.8%)
- San Jose: 490 (45.5%)
- Seattle: 488 (17.1%)
- Anaheim: 365 (14.8%)
- San Francisco: 335 (40%)
You’ll notice that Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Seattle have vastly lower percentages of homes going for more than asking price than Bay Area cities have.
Related: Stunning Cole Valley 'Tree House' Sells For $5.6 Million — $2 Million Over Asking [SFist]
Image: @cosmictimetraveler via Unsplash
