By Clyde Noel
Town Crier Correspondent
California Association of Realtors’ latest weekly report revealed Santa Clara County is feeling the real estate slowdown more than any other area in Northern California.
The inventory of unsold homes priced at $1 million or more could last about half a year. That means it would take that long to sell those homes at the pace of sales during June and July. Homes priced at less than $500,000 are turning over daily.
A total of 8,459 new and resale houses and condos were sold in the nine-county region last month. That was down 6.1 percent from 9,011 in June and down 4.4 percent from 8,848 for July last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems. So far this year, 53,001 Bay Area homes have been sold, down 15.9 percent from 63,022 for the same seven-month period last year.
As of Aug. 25, Multiple Listing Services revealed the following local area statistics.
In Los Altos there were 123 total listings with 84 active from $675,000 to $3,495,000. Thirty-nine were pending sales.
In Los Altos Hills there were 59 active listings from $1,488,000 to $24,000,000. Four were pending sales from $1,495,000 to $2,595,000.
In Mountain View there were 106 total listings from $420,000 to $3,000,000. Thirty-two were pending sales from $438,000 to $1,240,000.
Average interest rate for 30-year fixed rate mortgages was 6.83 percent, a slight decrease from 6.85 percent the previous week. The average contract interest rate for 1-year ARMs (Adjusted Rate Mortgages) was 5.69 percent, a slight increase from 5.67 percent the previous week.
Local realtors are seeing a shift in investment strategies: Many people, spooked by the stock market, appear to be shifting money into residential real estate. One indication is average down payments have actually increased in the past two years, suggesting that many of the buyers are people with large sums of money they previously would have put into the stock market.
Most realtors in the Los Altos/Mountain View have Web pages and one of the more interesting Web sites belongs to Deniece Watkins at Fine Homes and Estates/Seville Contempo. The Web site can be accessed at: www.YourHomeYourAgent.com and then click on Useful Resources. For more information call 941-7040.
