As I was posting this week’s “Yountville weekly real estate update“, the fact there were 32 active listings is very significant. This is the highest number of listings I have ever seen in 25 years of selling real estate here and since the previous week, the first time this number was ever in the 30+ range. In the past, this number would be normally be around 20. But since this real estate slow-down started in earnest here about 10 months, this number has been constantly creeping higher and higher. Interesting what the number for the most listings will finally be. On a good note, it is now one less for we did have one sale pending this week so far.
If you read the first part of this post, “Napa Valley Real Estate, a Tale of Two Times Two Markets“, you can probably figure out where this continuation is heading. Yes, there are two distinct markets for Napa Valley real estate. Much as it is in other parts of Califonia and the country, lower priced, reasonable valued homes are getting multiple offers, some as many as 20. Now you may get turned off by the fact this is for homes priced under $400,000 here in the Napa Valley, but that is just the fact nof life living here. The upper end is a different creature, nothing is moving and the months of inventories on the market are soaring.
To prove the point, one only need to look at the graphs below from Treadgraphix. I choose the City of Napa and American Canyon for they represent about 95% of all distressed sales. For the upper end, I looked at Yountville, St. Helena and Calistoga. It was no surprise but the months of inventory have come down steadily from January to June 2009 for Napa (8.3 to 5.5) and American Canyon (6.2 to 1.5) and varied in the extremely high range for Yountville (13 to 20+), St. Helena (15 to 74), Calistoga (9.5 to 58+) for the same time period. For Napa County as a whole, months of inventory has also decreased steadily from 9.5 to 6.1 mainly due to the huge percentage of all sales being in Napa and American Canyon. Remember, 5-6 months of supply is considered to be a balanced market between buyers and sellers and much less or more skews the market in favor of one or the other. And yes, being there are so few sales for the higher priced homes which is 90%+ of the market place in the up Valley areas, it may take a very long time to sale your home in this market especially if it is over-priced. In faact that could be 2-3 years if things don’t change.
Just look at the graphs below and you will see how they prove the above. The graphs are all the properties listed in my MLS, BAREIS (which represents approximately 95% of all sales here) which are For Sale, Pending (have an accepted offer) and Sold in each of these cities/town (Yountville is a Town) and for the Napa Valley. YES THERE ARE DEFINITELY TWO MARKETS HERE and the moral of this story, you better price your home correctly in this market.
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