3: The mean rate (taken over the course of the year) for closings in downtown is about 75/month.
The instantaneous rate of change on this is highly correlated to season (about 50 per october to march and about 100 per month april to september) but it works out the same. About 900 per year. Currently, there is about 400 active for sale in 92101 with roughly translates to about 5 months of inventory.
In a distress-heavy area, that is an impressive mean closing speed.
There are currently about 139 pendings listed in 92101. That means there are approximately 3 units for every one buyer as of today.
If you ask Jim Klinge about this, he will probably tell you that this is a healthy ratio with a just a hint of tilting toward a seller’s market.
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I just wonder how much inventory is *really* out there. Again, I think most of the specuvestors are gone or will be gone by year’s end (2011). Now we’re seeing some unemployment-related foreclosures and short sales, but those are slowing down. So, my REAL question is how many new, unoccupied, un-owned units are sitting in downtown’s inventory. For example, how many units in Bayside have been purchased (to use just one example)? I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 1,000 new units sitting in inventory downtown. Having said that… I just don’t know. I’m pretty sure that I can get my hands on that data soon, though. But if you know these actual numbers, by all means… inquiring minds and all. I’d love to be wrong about this.[/quote]
urbanrealtor might be right about downtown. Here are the numbers I just got from a research firm (they don’t have an agenda, but it doesn’t mean their numbers are correct).
There are ~10,300 condo units downtown. There are currently ~325 resale units for sale. There are ~245 new developer units for sale (far fewer than I thought). There are ~75 units sold/month, so that’s about 7.5 months of inventory.
On the one hand there have got to be a lot of underwater borrowers in downtown (still), so that’s inventory-in-waiting. On the other hand, there have been a sh*tpile of foreclosures over the last several years so the weakest hands are out of the market. In addition, zero new units have hit the market for almost a year-and-a-half. And we won’t see any new units for at least 2.5 – 3 years (that’s at least a year before anyone breaks ground plus 1.5 – 2 years to completion). So… supply and demand are rapidly coming into equilibrium downtown… which is what happens when building grinds to a complete halt.
Anecdotally, where my building is concerned, we had about 25 units for sale at one time, mostly bank-owned. Now we’re down to six units for sale. Almost 40% of the units have changed hands over the last three years. Anyhow, just a datapoint.
The only current building downtown relates to (1) the new library, (2) expansion of SD City College, and (3) two subsidized apartment buildings. That’s it.
So, I have to agree with urbanrealtor – it doesn’t look too bad downtown from a supply-demand perspective, which surprises me.[/quote]
What about all the units that were converted to rentals when the developers were unable to sell them? I’d guess that as soon as the prices rise to a certain point, these will come back on the market as “for sale” inventory. I’m guessing the developers/builders are in the red every month on a lot of these units, and they’d be happy to off-load them ASAP.
You know the downtown market far better than I; what are your observations regarding these units and the possibility that the developers are losing money every month if they are being rented out?