How about this category…

MOST EXPENSIVE CONDO/TOWNHOUSE:

740 Promontory Point #3209 And you thought it was impossible to make money in this downturn? This place was a foreclosure and sold in November 2008 for $750,000. It sold again in March of 2009 for $880,000. Nice!

HIGHEST PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT:

1040 Galley This Bayfront Court unit sold for $750,000, or $521.00 per square foot. The Promontory Point unit above came in at $388.00 per square foot.

LOWEST PRICED CONDO/TOWNHOUSE:

2109Admiralty This 1 bedroom unit went for $310,000…an overbid. Originally listed for $299,000.

LOWEST PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT:

720 Promontory Point #2302 2224 square feet and a purchase price of $635,000. It’s amazing how prices have fallen at this project. It came in at $285.00 per square foot.

LONGEST ON THE MARKET:

Yep, 720 Promontory Point again. A total of 284 days.

GREATEST OVERBID:

857 Canis This place really was an aberration. Sold via auction and priced at a really low, bait price of $300,000…the place got a ton of interest and closed at $564,500. $264,500 over asking. There were several other, normal overbids in 2009…the highest of those was $20,000.

GREATEST AMOUNT UNDER ORIGINAL LIST PRICE:

It’s really sort of painful isn’t it? Once again…720 Promontory Point!  It sold for $290,000 under it’s original list price. Ouch!!

And there you have it…I wonder what these will look like in a year.

I did this last year and it was kind of fun and illustrative…so here we are again.

MOST EXPENSIVE HOUSE:

700 Santa Cruz Wonderful house on a large waterfront lot at Longwater. 3800 sq ft in the house too. It sold for $1,599,000 and closed in November.

HIGHEST PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT:

602 Mystic Another nice waterfront, it came in at $672.00. Mystic must have had something going on in 2009…612 Mystic came in at $662.00.

LOWEST PRICED HOUSE:

398 Chesapeake This foreclosure, a really clean nice house too, came in at $750,000 in June. Last years lowest was $825,000.

LOWEST PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT:

248 Curlew This 3560 sq ft 5 bedroom house sold for $1,065,000…or $299.00 per sq ft.

LONGEST ON THE MARKET:

159 Flying Mist This home was on the market for 320 days. It’s also the winner of another category listed below.

GREATEST OVERBID:

1402 Leeward Interesting that all of the overbids took place in the range under 1 million. This house sold for $56,000 over asking. There were others…this was the highest.

GREATEST AMOUNT UNDER ORIGINAL LIST PRICE:

Once again…159 Flying Mist This place had the dubious distinction of reducing it’s price a total of $550,000 during it’s listing life before it ratified.

Nothing real scientific here…but it’s kind of fun to look at.

While we’re looking at the numbers, let’s also take a peek at the condos/townhouses. Strictly from a numbers standpoint, we’re looking pretty good here too.

2008 FC Condo/Townhouse DataPDF
2009 FC Condo/Townhouse Sales

In 2008 103 condo/townhouse units sold in Foster City…in 2009 100 sold.

In 2008 the average sale price for a condo/townhouse in Foster City was $637,436…in 2009 it was $633,787. Incredibly, less than 1% off of 2008′s number. Pretty decent!

Average days on the market went from 55 in 2008 to 65 in 2009. It’s worth noting that there were several properties that sold in the first week as well as several that took well over 200 days to sell. It was that kind of year. If a property was priced correctly the chances were pretty good that it was going to sell reasonably quickly.

It’s also worth mentioning that, for both condo/townhouses and single family homes, the first part of 2009 was glacial. It was incredibly slow and very little inventory was moved. That’s why it’s so remarkable that both categories ended up at 100 units sold. The second half was really pretty decent and normal. It certainly seems like another reasonable assumption that 2010 will be pretty healthy. I’m betting the numbers will be better than 2009′s for sure. We’ll see…

Seems like in the last few years it’s been a little tense when it comes time to look at the year to date numbers because my teeny little pea sized brain suggests that I’m sure to see a whole lot of bad news. Last year I did this same report…and it really wasn’t that bad! Well, certainly that could not have been the case for 2009…after all almost nothing sold in the entire first quarter. Right? How about we look at the actual numbers.

2008 FC Single Family DataPDF

2009 FC Single Family Home Sales

Just in case you don’t really want to wade through those actual numbers let me offer you the highlights:

In 2008 there were 95 single family homes sold in Foster City. In 2009 there were 100! In 2007…there were 100 too! Hmm…

In 2008 the average sale price of a single family home was $1,112,816, in 2009 it was $1,020,717. (-8.3%) Since the average sale price in 2007 was $1,157,960 it would appear to me that the total decline in the last two years has been about 11%. For what it’s worth, the 2007 number reflects the all time high in average sales price. That’s really pretty darn good in my mind versus the vast majority of the Bay Area…not to mention everywhere else!

One area where there was a clear change (just ask any realtor you know!!) was the average days on the market for a given listing. In 2007 it was 32, 49 in 2008 and 65 in 2009.

Bottom line here is the simple fact that we had 100 sales in what was certainly a down year bodes very well for sales in 2010. It seems unlikely to me that it will go down from there. My prediction is that it’ll be a normal year, many good deals will bring multiple offers and I’m suspecting we’ll have some price appreciation when all is said and done. Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see about that. Should be fun at least!