Sunday Opens

What a beautiful weekend we are having! I hope everybody is out and about on this fine Sunday afternoon. It's open house day! Throughout all of San Francisco the count for open homes today is:

109 Single Family Homes
186 Condos
21 2-4 Unit Buildings

That should keep you busy between 2:00pm and 4:00pm! A little piece of advice I have for your open house tour is to go with a list of homes that fits your wants, needs, and budget. It's easy to get distracted out there with all of those signs leading you every which way, but at the end of the day you might realize that you've only seen homes that are way over your budget and although they were probably all lovely homes, you haven't gotten any further in your search. The chronicle has a very complete open home list in their Sunday paper, and if you are working with an agent they can give you a small list of homes each week that fit your profile.

Another interesting statistic for now is the amount of price reductions we have had in the past two weeks. There were 306 price reductions in San Francisco alone; 188 single family homes, 106 condominiums, and 18 multi unit buildings have lowered their prices in the past two weeks. Some of the reductions are nominal; possibly only a gesture, but others are significant price reductions of 10% and sometimes even more. This is a great time for buyers to negotiate, not only on price but also on terms such as contingency time and escrow time. In a market like this buyers finally have some pull and should take advantage of this. I do, however, want to point out one very important distinction: selling prices being lowered does not necessarily mean that home values are depreciating. It probably means that the seller's expectations were too high to begin with and the sales price was inflated. It is only once the house is sold that we can compare that sold price with it's comparables to look at market trends.