The weather is cold. It’s getting dark pretty early. The calendar says December. But the housing market feels a lot more like spring or early summer. Case in point, I just closed 404 Nova Albion this week with four offers and a $100,000 overbid! That’s not what you’d typically expect in December.
Meanwhile this week my seller and I also looked at 2 offers on another listing in Sleepy Hollow asking $1 million. Both offers were significantly over the asking price. The house at 30 Garden Rock was gutted by a fire in 2018 and it is uninhabitable. That didn’t stop two investors from making great offers. We are scheduled to close escrow in less than two weeks. There are no contingencies for the buyer. This is not what you’d typically expect to see in December in the housing market.
The market has basically been like this since we pulled out of the Shelter in Place in May. This year I received multiple, over asking price offers on most of my listings. Virtually all the single family homes I priced under between $900,000 and $1,000,000 received multiple offers: 551 Tamarack Dr (2), 282 Oleander Dr (2), 108 Trellis Dr (4), 549 Montecillo Rd (4) and 30 Garden Rock Road (2). We priced 404 Nova Albion at $1,099,000 which also attracted 4 offers and it received the highest overbid of my listings this year.
I haven’t had the same type of overbidding activity at the higher price levels. The following properties I closed with just one offer: 552 Montecillo Rd ($1,350,000), 16 Sirard Lane ($1,395,000), and 530 Montecillo Rd ($1,431,000). I did get two offers on 550 Atherton Ave ($1,400,000) but it only went $1,000 over the asking price and that was after a price reduction. Sometimes you can attract more than one offer after a price reduction, but you should never count on it. That was kind of a welcome surprise and my seller accepted the offer May 23rd. We were coming out of the SIP and that was an uncertain time but 550 Atherton was an amazing property with a vineyard on an acre of land. You just don’t see properties like that very often in Marin.
Meanwhile the condo activity this year in San Rafael has been a little more hit and miss. Coming out of the SIP the first property I sold was a condo on the water in Santa Venetia at 22 Steven Way. We were asking $599,000 and got one offer for $606,000 which was great! Last month I closed 10 Professional Parkway #19 for $463,000 which was $6,000 under our asking price. That was actually pretty good considering there were three other condos on the market in the HOA at the same time.
Every house is different. Every situation with the inventory, pricing and preparation: it’s all different and constantly changing. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy selling real estate so much, because it’s challenging and I constantly push myself to find the best ways to make the most money for my sellers on their properties.
2020 has been a terrible year on so many levels, except the real estate market. After all, I just got $100,000 over asking in Terra Linda! With this kind of activity in December I get the feeling 2021 is going to be even better.