Sizzling San Francisco North Bay residential actual property market enters 2021 stronger than ever

Matt Perez Chica, who runs the Windsor pool contractor, said his business was fully booked for this year’s construction season between April and October. He now plans until 2022.

“People are moving to Sonoma County. Dotcomers want to get out of South Bay and nest, ”he said.

Perez Chica can hardly keep up with the demand. He juggles 55 potential leads and hires a lot of people. The contractor doubled its workforce in about a year to keep up.

In addition to the value of house sales in the wine country, the number of houses sold has also increased.

According to BAREIS, the total sales volume for its piece of wine country, which includes counties of Sonoma and Napa, was over $ 6 billion.

In addition, 6,443 single-family houses and condominiums were closed in this part of the wine country last year. That is around 600 more than in the previous year.

“And we probably have two more years of it,” said Erin George, who works in the Sotheby’s Sonoma office and serves as the new president of the North Bay Association of Realtors.

George has noticed a growing group of millennials looking for homes. The population group classified as 22 to 38 year olds last year, according to Nielsen Research, has traditionally been known for delaying home buying, marriage and raising children. It’s all about “the experience,” and that experience can change.

“People can’t go on vacation,” said George.

Many of these people have saved that money and are now spending it on housing, despite a pandemic that has resulted in double-digit unemployment.

For California as a whole, the routinely slower December compared to the summer months saw record growth in house prices. After falling below $ 700,000 in the previous month, California’s average price returned to that benchmark, beating it at $ 717,930 in the final month of 2020.

“House prices, which typically peak in summer, were unusually high in December,” Jordan Levine, vice president and chief economist of the California Association of Realtors, said in a statement.

Across the country, Zillow reports that property prices have also increased by over 10%.

“And basically they’re not showing any signs of slowing down,” said Zillow spokesman Matt Kreamer.

Zillow economists are not surprised by the ongoing “great reshuffling” in the Bay Area, which has seen a flight from the urban to the suburban living environment.

Research shows that urban areas of the Bay Area metro section grew house values ​​by 5.6%, while the suburbs saw 7.9% of the growth.

The Seattle-based housing research firm shared what its economist Chris Glynn called the perfect storm of factors.

Millennials are buying now, interest rates are historically low, and inventory doesn’t seem to be keeping up with demand. Low inventory levels were exacerbated by home sellers reluctance to list their homes during the pandemic.

Despite this trend, 334 new listings have been registered in North Bay but 446 homes have been sold in the past four weeks.

According to Glynn, the average number of days in the market in the San Francisco Bay Area in December was 14. That is 10 days faster than the same month of 2019.

“The market is not allowing inventory to recover and houses are being fled from the market,” Glynn said.

This thus contributes to the exploding demand.

When hints of the 2008 growing appreciation that led to a real estate collapse with the Great Recession surfaced, Glynn said conditions are now very different.

For one, historically low interest rates have enabled homeowners to spend less on their mortgages. In addition, those who buy could put in more money as they earn higher salaries, he said.

“According to this metric, I don’t see a ‘bubble’. We’ll see an upgrade in 2021 as well, along with the acceleration of this “major reshuffle,” “he said.