When Are The Numbers Wrong?

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of our Southern California First-Time Buyer Housing Market Update. My name is Stephen Meade host and with Domicile Real Estate, where we are on a mission to help California's renters become homeowners. I'm actually on location. We've got a fake background here, but I'm in Anaheim, right now at the California Association of Realtors, business meetings, right. This is where committees meet, discuss policies, things to protect homeowners, kind of a lot of things going on, really.

And I want to share a little bit about what do we use this data for? What is the state of good? And when is this data, maybe something that isn't going to work for you. And one of the things I want to talk about is that at the end of the day, real estate is fundamentally a local business. And some people have asked me Do we think with technology that real estate agents will ever go away? And I think the answer is no, I think technology and data are supportive tools for real estate agents. And the reason why I think that is an example that I'd like to share with you is something we have going on right now.

So I'm going to make you wait until the end, I'm going to go through exactly what the numbers tell you. And then I'm going to tell you how we have some anecdotal data that says exactly the opposite. And how do we reconcile that. So let's go ahead and get started, we're going to go through our aggregate data, it's an important word we're going to use here are aggregate data regarding where the market is at. So the first thing we've got here is our closed data. And just as a reminder, this is for LA and Orange County. This is our first quartile meant to wait towards that entry level into the market. The blue line is an entry level single family home. And the red line is an entry level condo, kind of a two bedroom two bath configuration.

And I want you to look at what is this chart say? Right? This chart basically says that that single family home market is a bit stagnant. The red line or a condo market that actually says that this is a market. I mean, this is like basically a four week period of really kind of dropping that median price mean, that looks like great news for entry level buyers in the condo segments. I've often talked about that sort of middle of August to end of September is really being a bit of a quiet period. And remember, this is closed data.

So this is four to six weeks old is based on contracts that were negotiated four to six weeks ago. So if we look here, our monthly payment, this incorporates interest rates, that is pretty flat here. 6212, we are actually down to 4572. On our monthly payment for our entry level condo, remember this is based on 5% down, that includes mortgage insurance, it includes HOA fees, property taxes, we really wanted this to be a very representative payment for an entry level buyer who might not be coming in. With a lot of downpayment money, though obviously, that helps. So if we look here to on our household income required, that too is pretty flat line for our single family home. But we are, again down to around $112,000 For our entry level condo.

Now, this is the one that I think is especially misleading, or I'm going to tell you why that this is a great aggregate tool, but it may not be describing the market that you're in. So our absorption rate is this quick and dirty calculation right to show you how many homes have come on the market in the last weeks and how many homes have gone off the market and Deskpro in the last two weeks. And so if we look at that, what do we have here, differential was single family home 80%. That's a little bit of a drop, right? That's still a very competitive market to look at this on this condo, and this one has dropped to down to 69%. That is actually going into this kind of more of a more of a balanced market between buyers and sellers.

Right at that point for those entry level condos. We look at our total inventory. That number is also starting to rise a little bit in both of these categories. But it's a little bit. You know, last year if we looked at that we were mostly flat through this time period, but it's not unusual to see some little bumps and whatnot. But really not a huge amount of movement in that inventory. But it's still a little bit upward right that indicates a less competitive market. If we look at our still active percentage of last 14 days, we are flat and elevated for our entry level condos, and we are actually more competitive, right for our uninsurable single family homes.

Remember on this one, a higher number is less competitive, a lower number is more competitive. Finally though, we're going to look at our weak supply of homes. And for our condos here we have seen that relative inventory actually go down. That's kind of interesting, right? Absolute inventory went up, meaning the number of homes available, but based on the rate of homes going in escrow, that means we are now under eight weeks of inventory. And we also saw a single family home revenue, or our single family home supply slip a little bit as well, that it just under five and a half weeks.

Now I'm going to share with you an experience, we have a client. This is a real client that we're working with, who's kind of looking in the central Orange County zone for one of these entry level condos, that two bedroom, two bath configuration, and what are we noticing is that in that central Orange County area, especially if it has a garage, if it's called those two full baths, that is a very, very hot market segment, almost all the properties are going significantly above their risk prices. There are a great there is a disparity right, between the number of buyers looking for these units, and a number that are available.

So we're not seeing that particular market look that soft. However, our aggregate data, right, which is all of Los Angeles in Orange County says that on average, that is a softer market, but it's that's not what our buyers in this particular market segment are seeing. And I think that's the reason why agents are always going to be important in that market, right? You're always going to want somebody who can read what's happening, there just isn't enough data really to support that you're gonna want someone who's got colleagues, someone who can talk to people, somebody could say, hey, this house didn't go as much as I thought it was, or Oh, we got way more offers than we were expecting.

This is all important information, and an agent help you develop kind of a strategy for your particular situation. Anyhow, enough of a commercial if you are looking to become a homeowner. And I really hope you are because I think it's not going to get easier. I think people are waiting for like this moment when it's going to be easy. I don't think that's coming. Not anytime soon, we just don't have a lot that is going to be changing the levels of inventory. I think that's really what's kind of keeping this market propped up or even accelerating it. In some cases, right? When every single property that comes up gets 10 offers, there's really only one direction for prices to go. And that's because there are way more buyers than there are available properties in that segment to meet those needs.

But if you're looking to buy your first home, and we really hope you are we'd love to be your voice of reason and expertise definitely reach out to us. We take a consultative approach. That means we sit down and we figure out a strategy. We're very deliberate. We'd love to work with you. Do not forget to like, subscribe and hit that notification. Bell. We've got extra information down below in the description. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you again real soon.