San Diego Market Watch - Real Estate Update For October 31, 2024

The number of new listings in San Diego County takes a dive, pushing the number of homes for sale lower for the second week in a row. Hang out for a few minutes and find out all about it. Today is October 31st, 2024 and you are watching San Diego Market Watch, San Diego County's favorite real estate information program. Please remember to give us a like and subscribe so you don't miss any of these updates. We are here each and every Thursday with San Diego Market Watch and lots and lots of zip code updates in between. Lots of information for you every single week. And if you have a home to buy or you'd like to try and buy a home anywhere in San Diego County, send us a message, give us a call. We know the numbers and we are here to help. So let's get right into it. Looking at the number of homes for sale, that is down for the second week in a row because look what happened with new listings. They went down between the 16th and the 23rd and then way down between the 23rd and the 30th. Now pending sales are also down, but not nearly as much as new listings. Pending sales have held mostly steady, definitely down, but look what's happening here for the first time in many, many months. The number of new listings and the number of pending sales are getting very close together again. Now let's see what happens in a week or two once election fever wears off. We see this every four years. Real estate activity gets really, really quiet right before a presidential election. I'm not going to comment as to why or what. It doesn't really matter. It just is a fact of life. That's what happens. Every four years we see a real lull in real estate activity just before the election. Some years it comes roaring back. Other years that takes until January or even sometimes February before things really come roaring back. So we will see what happens this year. However, if the number of new listings and the number of pending sales stay tight like this for very long, this number of homes for sale will come right back down and it will force prices right back up again. So that will be interesting to see. Although the other dynamic in all of this are interest rates. And oh my, look what's happened to interest rates. We are almost right back where we were a couple of months ago when we started rejoicing that interest rates were going down. Now they're going back up again. So many factors influence interest rates, not just the Fed's prime rate, although that does have a huge effect. Now we will see what happens again after this presidential cycle is over. If all of this calms down and rates settle back down again or not. I was certainly one that had been crowing about it and predicting that rates were going to go even lower. And like many prognosticators, I was not correct about that, at least not in the short term. This has a huge impact on buyers in terms of what their monthly payments look like. And it has a huge impact on sellers because most sellers are also going to become buyers once they sell their property because everybody needs a place to live. Very few people are just going to sell their house and go rent. So they want to buy as well. And when rates are high, it makes it less likely that that home that they're currently living in is going to go on the market. So that's what's happening in San Diego County real estate this week. If you like this content, please remember to like, share, subscribe and comment. We will be back again next week with more San Diego Market Watch, more neighborhood real estate update. So stay tuned, have a happy and safe Halloween, and we will talk to you later.