Central Valley Housing Inventory Update - April 26th, 2023

I want to give you an idea of exactly what's happening with the housing inventory in the Central Valley of California. There are a lot of people out there right now that are giving terrible advice from the news media saying, “Oh my goodness the housing market is about to crash” to neighbors that are saying “Oh my goodness look at all the for sale signs up the housing market must be really bad” to Aunts, Uncles, moms, and dads. 

Listen, stop listening to everybody else! We're in this market every single day and we experience this market every single day and the narrative that's going around does not reflect what's actually happening in the market, and I'm going to show you the data right now to prove that that narrative is not the case. So let's take a look at what's happening with housing inventory in the Central Valley of California and San Joaquin and Stanislaus County now.

This graph right here is going to show you back over the last five years what's been happening in the market as far as the number of homes for sale and the number of new listings on the market in Stanislaus and in San Joaquin County combined. Now when you you look at the Central Valley as a whole if we were to break this down county by county or city by City you're going to find that these numbers track almost parallel to this so some slight variations but they track parallel to this so this is the big picture of what's actually happening in our Market. 

If you were to call me up in March of 2018 so over here's March of 2018 you said “Hey Caleb, red shoe realtor, I want to buy a home!” I would say, “Fantastic which one of the 1951 available homes for sale would you like to go take a look at?” We'd be able to go out there and look at those homes. In March of 2022, so this was just last year, you called me up and said, “Hey I want to go take a look at some homes!” I would have said, “Great there's 998 available for us to go take a look at.” Now that's down substantially from 2018 when there were 1951 homes available for sale. Well come into today, so March of this year, from last year to this year, and remember last year everybody was saying, “Oh my goodness interest rates are going up the Market's going to crash you know there's there's no way this is sustainable!” 

So let's fast forward. You go to March of 23 and you call me up and you say, “Hey, red shoe realtor I want to go take a look at some homes!” I would tell you, “Okay great! which of the 850 homes available for sale would you like to go take a look at?” In fact, the inventory is actually decreased year over year! So the number of homes for sale last year when the market was raging hot, multiple offers were happening, and prices were going up… there's less homes available this year than there was last year! 

So let me just throw this out there. What do you think is happening in the market today? Yeah, we're getting multiple offers well over the asking price and prices are continuing to increase over what they were even last year in 2022, even with higher interest rates. Why? Because the number of available homes for sale is still down. 

When you look at the blue line it shows the number of new listings coming on the market and you typically see in the spring Market (March, April, and May) which is our hottest Market when the most people move and the most homes come on the market. Look what's happening compared to year over year and over the past few years. The number of new homes coming on the market is declining it's not going up. It's going up from month to month but year over year it's declining as far as the number of new homes available for sale.

In fact, when you look at this chart here if you look back the same time frame, so a Year's worth of inventory going back over four years we're actually down 62 percent and the number of new listings is down. There are a third less new listings, down 29.6%. And listen there's today's stats, I hate to break the news to you, but it's not getting any better. In fact, the number of homes for sale is less than it was in April than it was even in March. 

Typically in April, the inventory starts to ramp up and it's just not happening. Now the good news is that they're slightly more new homes that have come on the market this month than last month, but just barely. Until we get some new homes for sale this crisis as far as multiple offers well over the asking price is going to continue here in the Central Valley great news if you're looking to sell your home give us a call at 209-237-0303 We’d love to talk to you about the process. 

If you're looking to buy, now more than ever, it's imperative that you have an agent that understands the market and knows what's going on because if you're going up against 35 offers (yes, there was a home with 35 offers on it) you need to be able to stand out. We were able to get two clients into escrow the last two days in multiple offer situations because we know what's happening in the market and we're able to advise our clients to take the right actions.