Wednesday, June 27, 2007

What's Still Selling


Hi everyone, I have been away for a little while, so I have been unable to post. Now I'm back with some notes.
It used to be, when I first started Real Estate, that the hottest part of the market was always the price range that encompassed first time home buyers. In the Berkeley area, that is the $550K to $650K range. Those were the people who had to buy. They were starting families, begining to settle down, and trying to get that whole living as an adult thing down.
In these troubeld times, the hottest part of the market in Berkeley is the $750k to just under $1m market. These are second or third time home buyers. These homes in some of the better parts of Berkeley like Thousand Oaks, the Gourmet Ghetto and the Hills, still seem to fly off the market with multiple offers.
Above $1m things are a little quieter. I can understand this. Those looking for homes above $1m don't have to move. They have homes, and they can wait.
But what about those first time home buyer's market. Why is that so sluggish? Part of the reason maybe because of the tightening of loan requirements. All those 100% financing loans based on stated incomes have dried up as the banks have tightened their requirements.
That has certainly taken a lot of people out of the market.
So what looks like a reletively healthy Berkeley Real Estate market, may just be skewed because of a segment that is leading all the others.