Selling Oakland Real Estate: The Sellers Market
Posted by Hamid Grinage on Monday, January 28th, 2013 at 2:00pm.For several years starting around 2007, the real estate market in Oakland and in other parts of the Country could be described as a "buyers market". When inventory is high, it drives demand down because the supply is high. All the short sales and foreclosures that flooded the market from 2007-2-10 or so created an oversupply of homes, with not enough buyers who were ready, willing and able to purchase. This is partially what lead to the dramatically declining values that we saw in Oakland and eslewhere. If you were a normal seller who wasn't underwater or facing foreclosure and you wanted to sell your home, you were faced with having to price your home to compete with all the short sales and foreclosures that were on the market. This is why homes in neighborhoods with high amounts of foreclosures lost more value than homes in areas that didn't have as many foreclosures or short sales.
Around Feb. of last year, the market shifted. All of a sudden demand for real estate was high, a great many short sales and foreclosures had taken place which significanly reduced the inventory of real estate. At the same time, actions by the Government have created historically low interest rate..which has fueled the demand we are seeing currently. In addition, lenders have come up with a variety of options to help some homewners stay in their home. For every homeowner who is granted a loan modification or other form of mortgage relief, that is one less foreclosure that hits the market. The expanding popularity of these programs as more homeowners become aware of them is another reason for the declining inventory.
Now if you have equity in your home and you want to sell it, you will do much better because the dynamics have shifted in favor of the seller. Most sellers can expect to receive multiple offers on their property if it is priced correctly.
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