NEWS

With the continued focus on the government lately, it seems like an appropriate time to mention a new California State law that went into effect on January 1, 2017. Assembly Bill 2299 and Senate Bill 1069 impact residential real estate; the Bills and subsequent law are designed to provide relief from California’s housing shortage by limiting city authority to regulate accessory dwelling units on residential parcels.  Click here for more information.

Although we don’t profess to fully understand the law yet, it will be interesting to see how our local jurisdictions apply the law to existing regulations. The intent of the law is to allow the home owner the ability to legally build an accessory dwelling unit, like a granny flat, on their property.

If this is something you’ve considered, now might be the time to look into adding that extra unit.

OUR LOCAL MARKET

Even with rising interest rates (current rates), our local market remains very active. We continue to see a steady stream of new listings and an active, discerning buyer pool. For homes priced under $1M, we continue to see multiple offers on properties priced well relative to recent comparable sales. Broadly this behavior seems to carry through with homes priced up to the $2M mark. Homes perceived to be overpriced compared to recent sales in the area tend to sit.

The higher end market seems to be more value conscious as of late. For the first two months of 2017, we’ve had 7 sales above $5M. Of that mix, we had some notable news:

3 sales were handled off market
2 highest sales in Jan. & Feb. ($8.1M & $7.24M) sold at deep discounts – 78% of the last list price and 64% of original list price.

FEBRUARY MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

February ’17 Highest Sale
580 Freehaven Dr
5 BD / 5 BA / $6.600.000

February ’17 Lowest Sale
712 Spring St
3 BD / 2 BA / $550.000