Let the Autumn Selling Season Begin!
September is almost always the month with the largest number of new home listings in San Francisco: The number of new listings hitting the market in September 2014 was 15% higher than the #2 month (May 2014) over the past 21 months. Because Labor Day is so late this year, September only has 3 weeks of selling days after the holiday weekend, and if this is a big listing month – it looks like it might well be – we may find a whole lot of listings crammed into those 3 weeks. Usually, the 5 weeks after Labor Day feed the activity of the entire autumn sales season in SF.
So home buyers may want to prepare.
Because of the financial markets recent volatility, it’s possible that some significant percentage of buyers will be warier and hold off until there is more clarity. [This happened a couple years back with the national debt reauthorization standoff in late September/early October.] Media hysteria is not helping, and a raise in interest rates would probably trigger more volatility – at this point, someone stepping on a cat’s tail in Shanghai will probably trigger more volatility. The next Fed meeting is on September 16th & 17th
On the other hand, the Fed might announce (at any time) that no interest raise will occur (or minimize the scale of an increase), there might be a sustained market recovery this week, and last week’s craziness will quickly fade into insignificance.
Meredith Martin is a Broker Associate at Paragon Real Estate Group and can be reached at Meredith@LuxSFRE.com