Are we entering a buyer's market?

Are we entering a buyer’s market? It seems that we may be. We have had a few strong years of sales and increasing prices but that seems to be slowing down somewhat. Our office started noticing it after the fires of 2017 and when the 2018 fires hit, it didn’t get better.

I’ve spoken to other agents in the area and done a bit of reading from agents outside our area and it isn’t just Anderson Valley. An article I read on Inman (an online resource for real estate) from a broker in Napa pointed out that her area had also slowed down. I get emails from other agents regarding their listings and many of them now are including “price reduced” in their marketing remarks.

I pulled a graph of residential property up from the BAREIS MLS for the whole of Mendocino County and it shows that from June of 2016 to June of 2019 there was an increase in inventory of about 10% and a decrease in sales of 29%. The number of months of inventory has increased in that same three year time frame by 55%. When I just look at Anderson Valley (roughly Yorkville to Comptche in the MLS), our months of inventory is up 250%, our sales down 60% and the amount of inventory up 40%.

What does this mean for our local sales market? It means that sellers will need to be more aggressive in pricing, willing to concede more to buyers and work harder to make their properties appealing to buyers. It means cleaning up the yard and the home, fixing those items you’ve been living with but haven’t gotten to and realizing that the first offer might indeed be the best (only?) one you will receive. It means that agents have to strengthen their marketing, get creative and be there for our sellers to help them through this tougher time. If you want to know what this looks like for your property, give us a call or drop us an email.