Sales Volume in ’09 Hits New Low**
January 6, 2010Why the double asterisk? We’ll get to that in a moment.
Sales Volume Comparison (click to enlarge)
Observations:
- Single family home sales have been on the decline since 2003 and appear to have bottomed (or at least flattened) in ’08 & ’09.
- Condo sales volume tends to be more sensitive to market changes (hence the bumpier road) and continued to decline in ’09. Declines have been consistent since 2004.
- TIC sales volume has steadily increased over time, with a big push around 2004/2005, as Fractional Lending products became available. TIC volume dipped during the downturn along with other property types, but appears to have flattened.
Now, for those asterisks. As we zoom in and take a look at 2009, we see that the year was marked by an extremely dismal start. Stress levels were running high as questions loomed about the state of our economy. Fear was ubiquitous and not many people were transacting real estate at the time. As soon as spring hit, confidence began to emerge in the markets. The remainder of 2009 was relatively strong, especially considering the tighter lending requirements. It can be a little misleading to say that 2009 was the lowest year in recent memory, as the numbers were dramatically affected by a single horrible quarter. To say so would be ignoring the fact that confidence came back into the market demonstrably around April and continued strong through December. However, numbers are numbers and the year as a whole was as much a flop as 2008.
We expect 2010 to perform better than both 2008 and 2009, with different price segments experiencing different trends (more on this in future articles).
2009: Emerging from the Q1 gutter (click to enlarge)
Got ‘Cha’s:
- Sales volume was calculated for the City of San Francisco only.
- Lofts, 2-4 unit buildings, 5+ unit buildings, and lots/acreage were not included in this analysis.
- Numbers from 1995 may not be complete since the digitization of MLS was taking place at the time.
- Condo sales taking place at new developments may not be reflected in full.
Q2-Q4, emerging from the gutter
Welcome back! You were missed.
I like your charts. Easy to read.
Well thanks for hanging in there. I thought you deleted me from your RSS feed?? I knew it was going to be a tough quarter with creating our new business on top of everything else we have going on… but now that we’re through with that we should have a little free time left over to get back to blogging on the market. Cheers.
No prob. I was just threatening in hopes you would come back and feed my obsession.
tease!
At least 1 post a month please or its not worth keeping the blog going…