Real Estate Boys: Hope you are having a great summer so far.  Our question for the Boys is simple and easy.  What is the shape of the local market?  We often hear and read about the national real estate market and yeah, while we care we really don’t.  It’s the local market that affects me.  And you Boys should know, “It’s all about me, you know.” 

—    Moi

Well Moi, Yes we are aware the world revolves around you and only you of course.  And while it’s a little early for our Quarterly report, this is fair week and this was our only question so we picked you as the question of the week.  So, are you a winner or an also ran? 

Interesting, we just checked the MLS service we belong to and there were some pleasant numbers found.  While nothing will compete with late 2005, and then 2006, for listings and sales, it seems we are on the cusp of returning to a normal market.  Normal is what we should all be trying to get here readers. 

Lloyd and Larry aren’t computer savvy enough to figure out just how many listings we’ve had year to date, but currently we have 188 listings.  That number has been running like that for most of the year.   In our most humble opinion, the area we are in needs more listings. And in our opinion only between $175K to say $299K would be great.  There is a very strong market for that price range.  Also, surprisingly, there’s a very strong market in the $350K to $450K but not for buyers getting loans; that’s a cash market.  It’s hard for us to think of many buyers with that much cash just sitting in their banks. 

The pending market is sitting at 116.  That number does go up and goes up and quickly. Why? We have no idea.  To date we’ve seen pending over 150 and then early in the year in the low 100s.  The most interesting number from the pending market is that there are only 8 short sales pending.  If you recall back a few years ago the market was just reversed with 8 traditional sales and 116 short sales pending.  Oh how times have changed folks, for the better. 

The sales, or closed sales, are really interesting to us, not because that’s when we get paid but the numbers themselves are interesting. To date we’ve had 670.  That number works out to about 69 sales a month or 828 for the year-end December 31.  We are writing this article in the second half of June and so far we’ve seen 51 closings with plenty of time left in the month to reach 69.  The interesting things about these sales are the price ranges from the high to the low closing prices.  We’ve taken some liberties on the closings as there are some that are listed in a certain area but in reality they are not.  So, in the Pitman area the highest price closed to date is $510,000.  The area from Dennis Earl School to Canal, to Daubenberger to Geer Road,the best price is $668,000.  The THS area is priced at $520,000.  Westside and other areas the high is $290,000.  The outlying areas of Turlock have the ranchettes and farms and this is where we’ve taken some liberties.  We have taken out the farms and ranches.  But even with that the top price is $1,100,0000.  Then the Denair market’s top price is $480,000.   Not bad for a perceived down market folks. 

As we recall from these articles, now for almost three years, the 2005 and 2006 market on solds topped out in the area of 1100 closed sales for each of those years.  So, closing over 800 in 2015 is not too very bad folks.  The real estate market is coming back or if you believe in the half full or half empty, the market has returned.  We don’t know the market in Manteca so we aren’t going to attempt to report on their market.  We would bet, however, that Manteca’s market is even better than Turlock’s as they are much closer to the Bay Area buyers.  Remember the $1,000 per mile back a few years ago?

We Boys would be remise if we didn’t say it is a great time to list and sell.  I know Realtors have never said the times are terrible don’t sell or oh golly it’s not a good time to buy.  But it is a great time to sell as we have been saying all year. The Feds will raise interest rates and just last week there were rumblings of an interest rate hike in the fall.  Don’t wait until it’s too late Moi, prices are still reasonable, but they are increasing and increasing fast while interest rates are still extremely low.   And after it’s all been said and done the world still does revolve around you. 

Contact either Lloyd or Larry at Turlock Realty Group 209-634-0000