Asking prices tumble while number of days on the market spikes

A few days after sources like the data firm Core Logic and the California Association of Realtors reported that home sales dropped across all nine Bay Area counties year over year for nearly half of 2018, new data from the listing aggregate site Realtor suggests that the actual price of a home is on a downward trajectory as well.

Released Thursday morning, figures from 500 U.S. cities include stats for San Francisco showing that the price of an SF home—both houses and condos—dropped 4.31 percent since the previous month and 3.72 percent year over year, for a median price of just over $855,000.

That’s based on 4,834 December listings on Realtor, a number which is up 73.83 percent since December 2017.

The average SF area listing sticks around 51 days on the site. Compare that to spring of 2018 when the same figure was just 21 days, or the summer of the previous year when it was 24.

Realtor’s San Francisco stats actually refer to the larger SF metro area, which includes Oakland and Hayward. In the South Bay prices are down an even more drastic 11.5 percent year over year for a median price of just over $1 million. Like SF and the East Bay, South Bay listings on the site last 51 days on average.

Note that Realtor does not carry every listing on the market and that its sample size is skewed toward those sellers and realtors that choose to list on that site.

These figures come on the same day that the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the most expensive 2018 homes sold in the East Bay had to knock millions off of their asking prices. That’s technically anecdotal, but still intriguing in the face of larger statistical declines.

In November, Realtor reported that the number of Bay Area homes taking prices cuts soared year over year, with spikes ranging from 89 percent in Marin County to 356 percent in Sonoma County. In SF it was 92 percent.