Real Estate Beat: Spring Forward

We all woke up a little groggy on Sunday, cheated out of an hour of sleep as our clocks were moved forward in the night. Spring forward already? It’s March, and almost officially spring, and yet the market is still remarkably low in choices for buyers. Here are the inventory counts as of today:

• Alamo – 56 (-7)
• Danville –137 (-4)
• Blackhawk – 30 (-1)
• San Ramon –123 (+2)
• Dublin – 76 (-2)
• Pleasanton – 121 (-6)
• Lafayette – 57 (+5)
• Orinda – 33 (+1)
• Pleasant Hill – 46 (-9)
• Walnut Creek – 109 (+2)
• Rossmoor – 65 (-11)
• Antioch – 153 (-9)

Typically the inventory rises and falls seasonally, with the low during the winter holiday season and growing after the New Year until July or August. So each week, I keep expecting these numbers to get a little larger, but they aren’t. In fact, since the first of the year, the inventory in Alamo has dropped from 62 (to 56 today).

Rossmoor has seen the most dramatic drop: it was at 114 at the first of the year, now down to only 65 homes for sale. Antioch, which has not followed the seasonal ups and downs, but rather recovered from an inventory in excess of 1,300 homes for sale in 2007, has reached a new low again this week: 153, after being fairly steady at 200 over the past year or two.

San Ramon, Danville, and Blackhawk have stayed pretty steady since the first of the year, dropping a few one week and gaining it the next. Pleasanton has grown its inventory a bit and Dublin is steady.

Walnut Creek is down from 124 at the 1st of the year to 109 today; Pleasant Hill, which dropped 9 this week, is up a few (46 from 43).

In Orinda and Lafayette, the new inventory is more evident: Lafayette started the year with 38 and now has 57, and Orinda started the year with 23 homes for sale, now up to 33.

Homes that are desirable and priced right are selling fast; homeowners who are interested in selling should consider this to be a great time to market their home.