I was gearing up to update the sales statistics on our web site this morning when I got sidetracked. Fresh stats are still on the agenda, but first I wanted to attempt to graphically illustrate the broken record Steve and I have been playing lately for our clients and anyone else who will listen.
Namely, patience is a virtue at the higher price points, because the real show right now is happening in the below-$600,000 range.
This is a chart showing numbers of Scripps Ranch sales compared to numbers of listings by price point. It’s the old engineer in me; I was looking for that normal curve. While listing pricing generally follows the bell-shaped distribution we would expect, the sale prices chart bucks tradition.
In short: Listings are all over the board, but the guys with the checkbooks continue to congregate at or near the entry level. Think of it another way. You have a big, beautiful home with many fine rooms. Yet, whenever you entertain, everyone ends up in the kitchen. Anything below $600,000 in Scripps Ranch today is the kitchen.
(Data is from the Sandicor Multiple Listing Service and is for detached homes listed as of 3/4/09 and sold between 1/1/09 and 3/4/09.)
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t buyers out there for your $900,000 (or more) home. It just reminds us that there are fewer of them. When you see that a grand total of 26 detached homes have sold in Scripps Ranch since the beginning of the year and, of those, only two sold above $900,000, maintaining realistic expectations when selling a higher priced home will help to preserve your sanity.
