San Francisco Real Estate Stats

With all the news on subprime mortgages and the faltering real estate market, here are some interesting stats on San Francisco in the last few months. While they’re a quite a bit softer than one might have expect in 2006, they still look fairly strong. What’s most interesting to me is the sale price versus the final list price. In the go-go days, 115% wouldn’t be uncommon. Seeing 100.3% for condos makes the market that much more approachable. I was talking to the sales agent at the new Ritz building on Market Street, and they had some eight or nine properties still for sale. She mentioned that they were expecting to have offers some 90% of their listed asking price. You would have never seen that two years ago.

Median Home Sale Price:
November 2006: $750,000
November 2007: $820,000
Increase: up 9.3%

Average Sales Price as a Percentage of Final List Price, November 2007:
Sold Houses: 101.8%
Sold Condos: 100.3%

California SB 223

Senate Bill 223, passed and signed by the Governor last month prohibits property appraisers from colluding to artificially raise prices of their appraisals in order to raise their compenstation. In other words, they can’t base their fees on the prices at which they appraise a propery at. Can you believe this wasn’t illegal already? Crazy. From the text of the bill:

No person with an interest in a real estate transaction involving an appraisal shall improperly influence or attempt to improperly influence, through coercion, extortion, or bribery, the development, reporting, result, or review of a real estate appraisal sought in connection with a mortgage loan.