february 2024 San Luis Obispo Real Estate Market Update

Welcome to our April, 2024 market update for San Luis Obispo County.

We've had a great start to this year. We're very fortunate and blessed to be in San Luis Obispo County selling homes and helping families. Thank you for listening. We're going to jump right into three things today. Of course, the usual are market statistics, second, we're going to talk about an organization that's true and dear to my heart. Third, there was a recent ruling nationwide from the National Association of Realtors. We will touch on that because it's a very popular topic in the news.

What's important to hear in our marketplace? Our inventory is up about 10%. For anybody that's a buyer and even sellers, that's a good thing. The more homes we have available, the more choices, the more places people that have to sell have to go. So that's very healthy. About a 18% jump over last year. So that's about 20 or 30 houses and a little bit more than last month. Inventory is up. Pending's are down just a smidge, one or 2% along with sales.

Our new homes to the market are a little bit less than they were last month. We had 109 last month come on the market, just 97 this month. Here's a number I always throw at us. We had 173 close, we had only 97 come back on the market. Our market is still growing, but it's still a slim market in terms of inventory. Lastly, average price is slightly up from a year ago for sure, and our days on the market's increasing. So pricing, condition of the house, those make all the difference. In fact, homes that are well priced will sell in a week or less. Homes that aren't usually have to make reductions and there's a steep price to pay. Finding that happy medium is the key to today's marketplace. Alright, so in general, very strong market, very consistent with which we like. Interest rates have stayed pretty steady. We're waiting for that Fed little bump down, but we're not sure that's going to have much effect going forward.

What I want to talk about second, Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Luis Obispo. I was introduced to it early in my career and I've been on the board since nearly the inception of the organization 30 plus years ago. I'm bringing it up and use this platform because I think it has a huge impact on our county and our community. What we do, if you're not aware, is we match caring adults with youth that maybe have a situation where they don't have two parents at home or it's challenging, they're with their grandparents, they spend some time with them, they're there for them.

It's incredible. The results this simple act gets in terms of children's participation in school, their self-confidence, their grades, their ability to maybe take their education the next level, all come for this one act that's coordinated through Big Brothers Big Sisters. I bring this up now because one, we have a big event coming up May 17th, if you'd like to join us, come participate, call me. But two, there's lots of avenues to help. Could be a volunteer, could be a donor, could just be a big, there's so many ways to help and I just want to reach out to those people I know and say, if you're interested at all, I'd love to hear from you. Give me a call.

Lastly, national Association of Realtors. The Realtor Trade Group had a settlement class action suit, I believe is what it was called, and there'll be a judge ruling on that July 15th. If you're in the real estate industry, there's lots of talk, there's tons of opinions. We really don't know what's going to happen except two things. One, when we used to publish a commission that a buyer's agent would have the right to, if they brought a successful offer that won't be published anymore in the MLS, it will likely be available other ways.

This will be probably the biggest thing we have to work out, is a buyer. Before going to look at a house that's going to sit down with a broker, and sign an agreement saying, okay, this is what I can expect from my broker. This is how the broker gets compensated. So it's going to be actually, I think, good for the industry. It's going to be good for the consumer. There's going to be transparency about fees and how they're paid, and I think that's really a good thing. So do I think it's going to move the needle a lot? We're going to find out in July.

I'll let you know more when we have actual information, but I know when I started, there was no internet. There was no DocuSign. Everything has changed so much. We've been through a recession in real estate in 2008 that changed things forever. We've seen Y2K, we've seen all sorts of things. I don't think this will ever change the fact that people want to own their homes. I don't think it'll change the fact that people will need to sell and buy a different home or move on to something different.

All the things that keep a market going are there, how we do business might change and we're going to work through that as well as anyone. Thank you so much for watching today. Please give us a call if we can answer any of your questions.