Wine Country Real Estate Trends in June 2013
Abbreviated Broker Blog
This will be an abbreviated listing of Wine Country real estate trends. The July posting will include full market detail and closings for both May and June. Thank you.
Wine Country Group Results for May 2013
The Wine Country Group had 92 closings this May compared to 92.5 in May 2012 and 100 last month. Our dollar volume was $57.8 million compared to $45 million last year and $48 million last month. This is the highest dollar volume that we have ever closed in a month of May. Our Sebastopol and Sonoma offices led with 21 closings each while the Healdsburg office had 20 and the Santa Rosa office 17. The Sonoma office led in dollar volume with $14.9 million in sales while the Sebastopol office had $13.9 million and the Santa Rosa office had $12.7 million. The Santa Rosa office was sparked by a stellar $7.3 million dollars in sales by Christen and Donald Hamilton. Our Wine Country average closing sales price was $628,260 comparing to $486,209 a year ago. Our escrow openings totaled 92 units compared to 100 in May 2012. We had 43 new listings compared to 45 a year ago.
The Wine Country Group currently has 112 pending sales with a value of $75 million dollars. We have 137 active listings with a value of $112 million dollars. Our average listing price is $819,000 – compared to an average of $764,000 a year ago.
Wine Country Market – May 2013
Sonoma County: Inventory was 751 units at the end of May compared to 747 units at the end of April. Inventory is 27% below the inventory of May 2013 (1,035). New sales in May (615) were 14% lower than last year (718) and 8% lower than that of last month (671). There is a just a 1.2 months supply of inventory based on the existing sales pace – a stressed market. Properties are selling faster than they have in many years. Homes that sold last month were on the market an average of 65 days compared to 98 days on market a year ago. This is the lowest period for Days on Market for Sonoma County since October of 2005 at the height of the last market. With this velocity has come a surge in median price. The median price of homes closed in May in Sonoma County ($410,000) was 33% ahead of the median price of a year ago ($307,000). The low median price over recent years was $292,000 in February 2011. The market has rebounded 40% since that low.
Distressed properties (foreclosures and short sales) currently make up 9% of the inventory and 14% of the new sales – this continues to trend down month over month. One year ago, the distressed property inventory represented 14% of the overall inventory and distressed sales represented 41% of all new sales. There is 0.7 months supply of inventory of distressed properties based on the current sales pace. The median price of the 105 distressed properties that sold in the month of May ($325,000) was 30% higher than May a year ago ($250,000).
Napa County: The available number of units in Napa County (384) continued to rise for the third month in a row. The inventory is 20% lower than it was in May 2012 (464) and 16% higher than last month (332). New sales (149) were 17% below that of last year (179) and were 25% lower than the pace of last month (199). There is a 2.6 months supply of inventory based on the existing sales pace – more of a balanced market than Sonoma County. Nonetheless, the median price of homes closed in May in Napa County ($456,000) was 34% ahead of the median price of a year ago ($341,000). There were 15 closings in excess of $1.5 million in Napa County in May of this year compared to 10 in May 2012.
Distressed properties (foreclosures and short sales) currently make up 7% of the inventory. Currently there are 25 distressed properties in inventory compared to 56 a year ago. Distressed properties make up 21% of the new sales. There is 0.8 months supply of inventory of distressed properties based on the current sales pace. The median price of 32 distressed properties that sold in the month of May ($360,000) was 38% higher than May a year ago ($262,000).