Background - This weekly real estate market analysis is designed for clients of Creekside Realty. If this analysis were widely circulated it would undermine its value. Please do not publish or re-distribute this information. Creekside Realty's monthly newsletter is still widely circulated and available via our web site or using this link:
    http://www.creeksiderealty.com/market_update_new/market_index.htm
Feel free to redistribute the monthly newsletter. We have removed most of our detailed analysis from the monthly newsletter. The goal is to maximize the competitive advantage that this weekly analysis provides our clients.

The purpose of the weekly newsletter is to let you know what the real estate market is actually doing now, not 90-days ago. This should assist you in making more informed real estate decisions. We hope you appreciate the weekly Bay Area Real Estate Market Newsletter. If you or anyone you know are considering buying or selling real estate, Creekside Realty would like the opportunity to earn that business. If you want to be removed from future distributions just reply asking to be removed. Unless you indicate otherwise you will be deleted from the weekly Newsletter but remain on the monthly distribution. Your comments and business are always appreciated.

Our research and analysis is based on MLS data. MLS data misses about 10% of the unrelated 3rd party transactions that are reported late or are not placed on the MLS. The media typically uses data from public records. Public records include about 20% related party transactions that do not reflect market conditions. This explains why our median Sold price (based on MLS data) can be $545,000 and the median Sold price reported by the media (based on public records) can be $480,000. We believe that the MLS is more reflective of actual market conditions. Does anyone really believe that half the single-family homes in Santa Clara County selling on the open market sell for under $480,000?

We report on each County separately. This allows you to see that Santa Clara County is again being hit the hardest. Most of the media's reports combine the 9 Bay Area Counties. Although several individual counties have shown a price decrease over previous years, this trend is completely masked when you treat the 9 Counties as one region. 

By examining the data graphically we can spot trends of any period; including weekly, monthly, annually, multi-year. During the past 5-years of collecting and analyzing Bay Area real estate data on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis; it has become clear to us that adjusting the timing of your real estate purchase or sale sometimes by even a few months is becoming increasingly important from an investment point of view. To demonstrate the importance of timing a purchase and/or sale just look at these swings in median price. April 2000 = $560,000, September 2000 = $505,000, January 2001 = $577,500, October 2001 = $481,000, May 2002 = $578,000, January 2003 = $513,000, June 2003 = $565,000. So prices have had four peaks of about $570,000 and three valleys of about $500,000 since April 2000. The swings between the peaks and valleys has been as much as 20%, while the delta for the entire period is basically zero. The media uses tables and focuses only on year-to-year comparisons. Notice that January 2001 was a peak and January 2003 was a valley. This demonstrates that although there is a seasonal cycle, these cycles can get 180 degrees out of phase. This undermines the validity of those that claim that it is only valid to make annual comparisons. Clearly, the 2001 annual cycle was running ahead of normal and the 2002 seasonal cycle was running behind schedule. This will get 2003 off to a late start.

Displaying data for the previous 5-weeks covered the period since the most recent monthly issue of the Bay Area Real Estate Market Newsletter. Data from 10-weeks ago is included to enable you to notice longer-term trends. Data displayed below and the written commentary are based on single-family homes in Santa Clara County. Data for San Mateo, Santa Cruz, & Monterey Counties are at the end, following the article links. San Benito County is not included as there simply is not enough real estate activity to make a weekly statistical analysis meaningful.

We always think of market conditions in terms of the sellers/owners point of view. So a strong/good market is one with appreciation and quick marketing time. A weak/poor market is one with low, no, or even negative appreciation with long marketing times.

To be consistent with the monthly MLS data that is delayed by 4 full days, we attempt to do the same with the closed data used in this weekly Newsletter. So the closed data in this weekly Newsletter is only through the previous Sunday. The initiated offer data is only through Wednesday evening. It used to be Thursday night but we had to back this up because of the new slower MLS and the additional work required to gather and analyze the data. The daily data is now as of 2 AM on Thursday, December 23rd, instead of Friday.

NOTE: This starting December 22, 2005 the data reflects minor corrections that changed the values slightly but did not impact the conclusions. The changes were from deleting the last 2 leap days from the data and changing from the same day of the week to the same date. The result of these two changes is between December 15, 2005 and February 29, 2004 our seasonally adjusted data was off by one day. We simplified the spreadsheet in the process reducing its size from 26+ megs to 22+ megs. We also replaced the 5-year average with a 8-year average. This gets us closer to our goal of 10-year averages for all data.