This is an Analysis of the Santa Barbara Real Estate Market including Carpinteria, Summerland, Montecito, Hope Ranch, downtown Santa Barbara and Goleta through the month of May 2013.
For the Home Estate market the numbers of sales went up in May to about 135 rising from 129 in April and 102 in February. But, the Median Sales Price dropped for the month to about $880,000 from the approximately $915,000 level we saw in April and March. The opened escrows fell to about 135 from the 150 in April but that number was up from the 112 we saw in March. The median list price on those escrows remained stable however at about $985,000 which is where it was in April but up from the $949,000 we saw in March. There were about 165 new listings that came on the market in May with a median list price of approximately $1.15 million and an average list price of just about $2 million while the overall inventory went up only slightly from about 300 units for sale in April to just about 3`5 in May.
Year over year sales are up about 12% with the median sales price up to roughly $890,000 for a 13.5% rise. The average sales price is also up going from just over $1.335 million in 2012 to approximately $1.446 million in 2013 for an 8.3% rise while the numbers of escrows are up just 1.5% with the median list price on those escrows up about 17.3%.
The Condo segment of the market remained strong with about 50 sales in May up from 36 in April and 37 in March. The median sales price went down a lot however from $554,000 in April to roughly $470,000 in May while the numbers of escrows went up from 42 in April to about 50 in May with the median list price on those escrows falling a little from $517,000 to about $500,000
There were roughly 50 new condo listings that came on the market for the month with a median list price of about $500,000 and an average list price of approximately $600,000 and, just like with the Home Estate market the overall inventory hardly moved at all actually falling to about 55 active listings from Carpinteria to Goleta.
Of the single family homes that sold for the month roughly 34% of those sales were over the asking price and for condos that number was about 38%. The average over asking price for homes that sold was about 4% and for condos that number was about 2.5%. New listings of single family homes are up but for condos new listings are down and after seeing escrows for single family homes way ahead of last year’s pace most of the year that margin is currently only about 1.5% up while escrows for condos are down about 7%. Sales for both single family homes and condos are currently up however with the prices for both segments also up but we could be seeing signs of a cooling off of the market.
