Overall inventories in Contra Costa County have been on a steady decline over the last 12 months, and now stand at a slimmed down 40% of where they stood last year. To give a sense of perspective, the county inventory for this past month is down a whopping 2900 units from where it stood exactly one year ago. There’s no negating the positive nature of these numbers, however the overwhelming majority of these sales represent the lower end of the county market that was most impacted by the subprime loan meltdown. Many of the homes were foreclosures, REO properties, or otherwise sold by financially distressed sellers. As I pointed out in the earlier “chapters”, we’re still in the middle innings of the mortgage meltdown, and it’s too early to begin celebrating any sort of victory over the crisis.
Contra Costa County Inventory
The real news in this segment is being made at the upper end of the market. For those who have read my previous posts, this comes as no surprise. For the purpose of this discussion, we’ll define the “upper end” market as being comprised of any home over $1.5M. That’s fairly conservative for communities where $2M+ homes have historically been considered the starting point for this domain.
Lafayette and Orinda $1.5M+ Homes Inventory
So, what’s going on in this segment? “Not much” is the correct answer to this question. Based upon the latest data available for November, we have a robust 21 months of inventory on the market at $1.5+ in Lafayette and Orinda!! It also doesn’t look like the situation is going to turn around anytime soon. With NO homes in this segment reported as “pending sales” during November, we aren’t going to see any type of a bounce in “sold” properties in December. January is not exactly the time of year when we see buyers rush into the market, yet we often see inventory start to flow in by mid-month. In the upper end, I suspect it’s going to get worse before getting better.
