Fewer Bay Area homeowners listed homes for sale in June than last the same month last year.
Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times
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Housing inventory was down by more than 30 percent during the past year in the Bay Area, according to real estate website Zillow.
When comparing June of 2013 to June of 2012 in its database of listings, Zillow found there were fewer homes on the market in the San Francisco metro area, but nationwide, the number rose by 5.3 percent.
Zillow listed 4,528 total homes for sale in June of this year, down from 6,496 last year, in the San Francisco metropolitan area including San Francisco, Alameda, Marin, Contra Costa, and San Mateo counties.
In our market, having fewer homes for sale has pumped up prices and sparked bidding wars.
“Inventory will likely remain below year-ago levels for a while yet, as builders ramp up capacity and sellers wait to squeeze every drop of equity from their home before listing,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist.
Experts expect that with prices climbing up, more homeowners will list their properties for sale and prices will stabilize.
“Going forward, as this new supply makes its way to market, we expect the pace of home value appreciation to slow down from unsustainably high annual levels of 5 percent or above to more moderate levels closer to historic norms of 3 percent or 4 percent,” Humphries said.
Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.
Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/06/bay-area-housing-inventory-drops-by-30.html