Gene Wunderlich, Sr. Staff Writer

So July was good. So good, in fact, that we pulled within 40 homes of last year-to-date selling 6,337 homes through July compared to 6,377 in 2018. That’s still a bit off the 7,008 pace set in 2017, but not bad. Here’s hoping we can keep that momentum going. But lagging sales isn’t just a […]

With half of 2019 behind us, what can we derive from the year so far and what does it portend for the remainder of the year? Well, sales continue at a slow pace. June sales fell 6% month-over-month (1,131/1,059) and 4% behind last June (1,087). Prices were virtually flat from May ($388,974/$388,642) but retained a […]

As you might infer from that, the slowdown in sales has not just impacted our local market but has been felt across the state and the nation as economists struggle to explain why. As has been consistently pointed out, the underlying fundamentals of the economy continue to be strong with unemployment at historic lows, wages […]

Last week at our Legislative Day meetings in Sacramento, Realtors® heard from Governor Newsom in a far ranging address on the positives and negatives of this state we call home (for now). We were encouraged that housing is one of his priorities as he seems to ‘get it’ that past policies have damaged the industry, […]

Poppies! I blame the poppies for the slow housing start this year. People couldn’t get to the region to buy houses because of the poppypalooza or the apoppycalypse or whatever you call it. But it truly was spectacular and another reminder why, if you’re going to live in California, this isn’t a bad place to […]

Our local housing market experienced a little bounce in February. That’s somewhat unusual but not unprecedented in that February sales are generally a little softer than January, plus it’s a short month and all. But as forecast by pending sales coming into the month, sales in February were up about 12% over our dismal January, […]

As I pointed out on the demand chart, pending sales are a precursor of future closed sales and last month there were only 560 pending sales. January pending sales have increased to 721 indicating that February sales are rebounding. Historically, that’s a little early to see a volume increase like this and may be positive […]

But we were reminded last month by National Association of Realtors® Chief Economist Dr. Lawrence Yun that our perception of current events is clouded by how good or bad our memory is. For example, home sales locally and across the country will be down this year compared to last. Nationally they’re expected to drop about […]

We’ve just returned from a series of state and federal meetings where we had the opportunity to celebrate some legislative victories from the past year, lick our wounds over others and foment plans to deal with the changed political landscape we will encounter at the city, county, state and national level in 2019. We are […]