The Oakland Real Estate Market is HOT
Posted by Hamid Grinage on Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 at 2:41pm.I'm happy to say, that there is definitely a significant increase in activity compared to this time last year. Multiple offers are becoming more and more common, I've had several clients in the past few months get outbid on properties. One recent client purchased a home in Castro Valley and paid over 25k over the asking price. You may say, yea but that's Castro Valley..but that was just one example. Recently I submitted an offer for a client on a condo near Lake Merritt. The condo received 16 offers, and sold for about 70k over the asking price. This is by no means an isolated incident either..it's actually becoming the norm to see multiple offers now.
The inventory of real estate for sale has went down, which means that naturally demand is increasing. In addition to near historic low interest rates, this has led to our Market in Oakland and the surrounding East Bay to really heat up. I'm hopeful that this also means that we are closer to the days when foreclosures and short sales are just a small fraction of the market...as they should be. Condo developers are putting units on the market that they have previously had as rentals, another indicator that the market is improving. The percentage of "normal sales" is increasing which is a very welcome sign. There was a point at which about two thirds of everything that was on the market was a distressed sale. By distressed I mean that it was either a short sale or a foreclosure. Because there were so many foreclosures on the market, many sellers who had equity chose to wait it out instead of selling..mainly because they were worried that they would have to compete with the rock bottom prices of the foreclosures and short sales.
Now that there are fewer distressed real estate sales, the normal sellers are realizing that the market has shifted in their direction and they no longer have to worry about not getting a fair price.
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