Los Altos Real Estate Blog

The Los Altos real estate market has been on fire for the last month and is showing no signs of slowing down.  Multiple offers, price increases, and heavy competition are now standard especially for homes priced under $1,500,000.  The entire market has improved from the least expensive bargains to the high-end luxury homes.  What is making things hard for buyers and definitely giving an edge to sellers is that most homes are selling in the first few days on the market.  This is giving little time for buyers to consider their options and prices are going up.

The median and average sales prices for Los Altos homes in March 2011 was $1,602,000 and $1,598,000.  The same figures in March 2010 were $1,743,000 and $1,518,000.  The median is also down from February 2011 when it was $1,782,000.  This would have you thinking that the market is actually weak but here's the difference; more homes sold for all cash and with multiple offers than they did last year.  That's because inventory is substantially below what it was last year or last month.

There were 50 Los Altos homes left on the market at the end of the month.  That's down from 54 last month and way down from 93 in March 2010.  In March 2010, there were 60 new listings on the market but in March 2011, there were only 26.  With so little inventory, the competition has increased substantially.  So, why the drop in average selling price?  That's being driven by several low price Los Altos houses and a few that have been on the market a long time.  Old inventory at low prices are being bought up and those low prices and long times on the market are pulling down the averages.

Since inventory is so low compared to last month and the same period last year, I think we'll see a huge increase in the average selling price of Los Altos homes.  There is one sale, on El Monte, that will skew the numbers a bit because it was a 2000+ s.f. house that sold under $1 million.  However, the location was a major issue (at the Foothill/El Monte intersection) and it isn't an example of a typical sale.  The number of new listings this week shows that listings that were on the market last year or later and taken off the market are coming back to be sold.  This will start to clear out the expired and cancelled listings from last year which shows even more confidence on the part of sellers.

There were 28 closed sales and they got about 97.5% of their asking price.  Again, this is skewed by older bargain listings with price reductions.  Last month the sales price of a Los Altos home was just under 100% of listing price.  I expect to see that return in April.