What's Happening in the Real Estate Market Now??

Hey there, Betsy Heller, Achiever’s Realty, coming to you today with a market update, wanted to give you a quick update about everything that’s going on in the San Diego County market and how that affects you. So, first, inventory remains low. We have an inventory that is at 5,409, as of today. In January, just to give you a contrast before all of this, January 1st, we were at 4,316. So we’re only up 1,093, which is very little given the time of the year it is. So a lot of people move in the spring and summer, we’d expect the inventory to be higher for there to be more turnover. That brings me to part two, turnover. Pending sales has continued to increase, so this is over the last five weeks. So we’ve gone from 347 a week, up to 670 in this past week, sales that have transpired. So these are listings that have gone into escrow. So we’re talking about getting close, getting at the 80% mark of what we would have seen for last year. Again, last year we were limited by inventory, not by the number of buyers. So if you’re thinking about selling, now is absolutely the time. But I want to leave you with this quick thought, because I think this is one of those things that people are trying to wrap their heads around when it comes to real estate in San Diego. First, it’s that what I’m seeing is that buyers want to buy, sellers want to sell, but lenders aren’t real wild about lending. The guidelines keep changing and lenders keep falling back to government backed loans. So you’re seeing the criteria get stiffer and stiffer. One example of that is the forbearance law changes. Just in this past week, we’ve had two changes. First, they came out and said if you had taken a forbearance in the last couple of months, if you were say a business owner and fronting the money to your employees for payroll, waiting for the PPP to kick on, then you couldn’t get a new loan or buy a home for 12 months. Well, they reversed that today or yesterday, saying that now you just have to bring it current and wait three months. So you’re seeing a lot of turnover in lenders’ guidelines. It’s because they have a lot of people trying to refinance or purchase because of the low interest rates. So again, sellers want to sell, buyers want to buy, lenders aren’t real wild about lending. So if you’re looking to buy or sell, now is the time because guidelines will only get stricter through the end of this year. This is your market update. Look forward to talking to you soon.