The California Association of Realtors came up with a 61 page statistical survey of home sellers and there’s some pretty interesting results located there in. For those of you with plenty of time to kill here’s the whole report:
There’s alot of information in there but here’s some highlights:
66% of the respondents said they sold their home for financial reasons such as trouble making mortgage payments, monthly payment increases, desire to move into a rental to save money or other unspecified financial difficulties. None of these reasons had been given on any prior report done by CAR since 2003.
Only 14% of sellers had a fixed rate loan. 60% had either 2 or 3 year adjustable rate mortgages.
88% of sellers reported their biggest concern was “the time it would take to sell”. The sales price of the home was also a major concern…86%
Among the respondents, the average time these sellers had lived in their homes was 36 months.
Interestingly, 84% said that the Internet was a significant part of their selling process…that’s up from only 12% in 2003.
Also interestingly, 45% of all sellers and 74% of first time sellers considered not using an agent to sell the house. That’s way up from even 2007. Of course, 96% did in fact end up using an agent.
The top factor in selecting a Real Estate agent was lowest commission…60%
33% of these sellers found their agent on the Internet…that’s up from only 6% in 2007.
Not too surprisingly the happiest sellers were the ones that got the best price..43%. The biggest complaints came when these sellers got less than they wanted and it took too long to sell.
Anyway, California is an awfully big place with many, many micro real esate environments…but it sure seems illustrative as to the motivation of sellers…and how significant the Internet has become as a force for selling a home.
Not that I’m trying to stir up the pot at all…but I’m beginning to think that there’s a bottom out there after all. Why…you ask? Because in the last week or so I keep running into multiple offer scenarios on well priced listings…many of which I have clients for and we’ve missed them! Take, for example my friend Ronda O’Leary’s listing at 889 Erickson in Foster City. It’s a short sale and needs some work…but it got three offers last week listed at $599,000. Meanwhile, the same floor plan is also listed around the corner on Cabot for $658,888 by another good friend, Lorelei Keim, and it’s been on for over a month.
Or How about this one? 820 Sunset in San Carlos listed by Mary Duvall for $675,000. That’s an incredible price…and naturally it got several offers. This story exists right now in just about every community on the Peninsula. When the property is priced significantly, or even sometimes slightly lower, than the comparables it attracts a crowd and that seems to be translating into multiple offers. I could account for a good number more as well just from the last week or so.
Jim Minkey on 
badmonkey on 
Anurag on 
