SNAPSHOT view of Sonoma County Real Estate Sales in a Wild Week
Just opened up our weekly office sales update and was curious to see how sales activity was affected last week given the horrendous economic news. Had all business activity ground to a halt? Yes some folks are deciding to sit on the sidelines for a month or two or six. But what did I find for our office as a whole? I found a very normal to high level of activity for the week. (I should mention that Coldwell Banker Santa Rosa has over 100 active agents and our sales totals are generally about double of the second ranked Sonoma County real estate office. )
30 New Listings (19 are bank-owned or REO properties-only 4 are priced over $500K)
29 New Sales (open escrows) 29 Brave souls who dared to put pen to paper last week and not run for the hills. On the sub-500 price range, about half appeared to be first time buyers and the rest investors.   We normally run somewhere between 20 and 30 sales per week so this is a typical number. 19 of these are bank-owned properties.
22 Closed Sales of the closed sales, 14 were bank-owned properties.
The biggest trend difference we see is not the numbers of transactions but the price points and this is a consistent phenomenon since early 2008.
Of the new listings, only 4 were priced over $500,000. Of the closed sales, only 3 were priced over $500,000 and two of those 3 were priced over $1,000,000.  By far the lion’s share of our business right now is the entry level priced bank-owned properties. I should mention that our office is home to James Madison, who has approximately 50% market share for REO properties in Sonoma County and some inventory in some of the surrounding counties as well.
Â
