Still crazy hot - and not just the weather

The real estate market remains crazy hot still, even a year after Covid-19. I looked at some graphs for the County of Mendocino in one of the multiple listing services (MLS) I subscribe to just to confirm what I am seeing happen in our area. The two graphs show a strong correlation between June of 2020 and now; June of last year is when I started to see the uptick as well. I enjoyed a very quiet March through May, working on the ranch with my husband, but in June I started driving and showing like crazy.

The first graph, below, shows the number of homes put on the market for sale, the number of homes sold and the number of homes “pended” meaning, put into escrow, by month, for roughly the past year, for all of Mendocino County. You can see that in the first part of 2020 there were a lot more homes for sale than sold or pended. Starting in June the number of homes that sold or pended started to go up and by last month, March of 2021, the number of sold and pended homes are higher than the number of new homes listed for sale.

Mendocino County homes for sale, sold and pended (put into escrow) by month for the past year.

The second graph shows the number of Days on Market for homes listed for sale in Mendocino County by month as well as the percentage of sales price to actual selling price for those homes sold. In this one, the downward trend starts to drop significantly in April of 2020, with the lowest numbers in November of 2020 and March of 2021. The percentage of sales price to selling price (what sellers were asking vs. what buyers were paying) rose from 94% of asking price to 101%, or over asking price. While this may not seem like a lot, I also looked at the December of 2018 to February of 2020 and the percentage for that time was mostly 94% to 97% of asking price.

This graph shows the average number of Days on Market for homes for sale in Mendocino County as well as the percentage of the asking price actually paid by buyers.

Finally, I looked at inventory for the whole County. What I found there is that there is currently just one month of inventory in all of Mendocino County. Then I looked at price per square foot. That started at $399 in January of 2020 and is now $530 for March of 2021. Unless there is a significant increase in homes for sale, this trend is likely to continue and prices should continue to rise.

All of the information above is supplied by the Bay Area Real Estate Information Service (BAREIS) and is not just the activity of North Country Real Estate.

And then there is the weather - 80 degree days in April? The hills are already turning brown, we’re all having to water our plants. Apparently there was a fire today on highway 253. This is likely going to be a scary fire season. On the one hand, it has been perfect bicycling weather, on the other, it’s just too frightening.