San Mateo County’s 2018 Q1 Market Update

Joe Polyak May 11, 2018

Your quarter one San Mateo County market update is available, and I am diving into the details with you.

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Right now, we’re still in a red-hot seller’s market that’s jam-packed with bidding wars and homes selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking price. It seems like whenever a for-sale sign is put up in someone’s yard, a sold sign is put out the next day.

But just how hot was San Mateo County’s first quarter market? Let’s dissect the numbers.

In Q1 2017, there were 1,100 homes listed for sale and 712 homes sold. In Q1 2018, 1,110 homes were listed and 746 homes sold.

The real shocker comes in looking at the actual inventory for the end of the first quarter. Last year there were 433 homes left on the market at the end of the first quarter. This year, meanwhile, that number dropped drastically to 319 homes left for sale in the entire county. That’s a 26% drop of homes available for sale going into the second quarter.

As you learned in your Econ 101 class, demand (and prices) go up as supply goes down.

The median sales price for a single-family home in San Mateo County in 2017 was $1.3 million. That number jumped by 21% in 2018 to $1,577,550.

To give you a little perspective, the average return on the stock market per year is about 10%. These numbers are even more impressive than just seven years ago. In March of 2011, the median sales price for a single-family home in San Mateo County was just $633,500.

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As you learned in your Econ 101 class, demand (and prices) go up as supply goes down.

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With the low supply and the high demand come quicker and quicker sales.

In Q1 2017, single-family homes sold in 30 days. In 2018 that number was cut by a third to 20 days.

How does all this craziness happen? Well, the main pricing strategy a Realtor uses when selling a client’s home is they list the house for sale about 5% to 15% below what they believe to be the market price. When you couple that with not a lot of homes for sale and a lot of eager buyers, who make a lot of money, you get bidding wars and the highest sales prices.

The average price that a home sold for over the asking price in Q1 2017 in San Mateo County was 5% over asking. In 2018, it was 12% over asking. In Daly City, homes sold for a whopping 90% over the asking price!

If you want more detailed data, if you’d like me to run the numbers on condos or townhomes, or if you are considering making a move and want to know how all this data will play into your real estate plans, please reach out to me and I will be glad to send the info your way. I will be more than happy to discuss it with you.