March 2017

Spring is in the air! Like all of you, I’m thankful for the copious amounts of rain we’ve had this winter – but enough’s enough! I’m loving the sunshine, and I’m looking forward to the weather heating up. But the Aptos real estate market has galloped ahead of mother nature: it’s plenty hot already! Would you believe this: the Aptos median home price, February 2017: $1,050,000!

Everyone thinks that the spring heralds the start of the traditional real estate sales season. Truth be told, we don’t have much seasonality in the Aptos real estate market. While the market may take a bit of a slow down around the holidays, it’s usually roaring right along half way through January. And that’s borne out this year, because many of those February 2017 closings were initially listed for sale in January.

Compared to last year, it’s been a busy start to the real estate year: 15 single-family homes sold in Aptos in February 2017. You’re thinking that’s not a lot – but it’s 36% more than a year ago, when only 11 sold in February 2016.

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Those 15 homes sold in an average of 52 days – about the same as last year at this time, when they sold in 51 days on average. Sellers received 98% of full asking price in February 2017 – a smidgen better than the 97.6% they received a year prior.

The #1 favorite topic among the water coolers in the local real estate brokerages is real estate listings – where is the inventory?! 25 new single-family home listings hit the Aptos market this past February. A year ago? 26. But wait, we’re a week into March already, so how are we looking now? Just 4 new listings in the first 7 days in March 2017 – a year ago, we had 7 new listings by now.

A lot of folks are going to see the $1,050,000 February 2017 median sale price and say, “Wow! That’s really high!” And it is – but the median home price in January 2017 was even higher – $1,145,000. And in February 2016, the median home price was $1,059,000. These prices aren’t an anomaly – upper-end homes in Aptos are selling, comprising about half the market.

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It may look like even at $1,050,000 the median sale price in February 2017 came in a little weak – but I put that down to the low sales volume. 15 sales does not represent a huge pool from which to draw meaningful conclusions, but it does indicate a market that is at least holding is own, at least for the time being. Interestingly, Zillow now rates zip code 95003 as only a 6.1 out of 10 on its “market health” score.

The “health metrics” I monitor most closely are median sale price, days on market, sales to list price ratio, and absorption rate. Right now, there are 49 single-family homes listed for sale on the Aptos MLS, but only 26 of them are available for purchase (the rest are already under contract). The way I figure it, we’re looking at around a 51 day supply of homes for sale in Aptos – and that means we are still in a very low-inventory hot seller’s market.

The $6,400,000 question is: but for how much longer?

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