No June Swoon

As we’ve learned over the past 36 months, there are many ways to gauge the health of a real estate market. You can go with the monthly sales stats released by the San Mateo County Association of Realtors (SAMCAR) or go to real estate websites like Trulia, Zillow and Redfin, which track market trends by the month, week and day. You can talk to realtors, mortgage brokers and homeowners to get the street-level picture.

One of my favorite barometers for judging the local market is counting the number of “open house” signs lining El Camino Real each Sunday. The number of signs corresponds with the amount of unsold homes on the active market, so the more signs you see – and the more sporting the same addresses week after week – the more trouble for the market. This, admittedly, is an unscientific approach, but cut me some slack; I use it as a jumping-off point, not a final analysis.

Driving through Burlingame last Sunday, I noticed that the cavalcade of signs seemed lighter: not as many Alain Pinels and Coldwell Bankers, nary a Greenbanker, fewer hand-scrawled addresses pointing toward Easton Addition. Could all of those homes that sat on the market all winter, dutifully open to visitors each Sunday in hope of securing a buyer, have finally sold?

When I got home, I cracked open the laptop. SAMCAR numbers for May were out, showing 24 Burlingame sales for the month, an increase of nine from April. Average sale price was up to $1.365 million, 5 percent higher than April’s $1.295 million and an impressive 14.6 percent increase from May, 2010.

Delving deeper, I got into sales data for June. An even dozen homes closed escrow in Burlingame during the first 11 days of June. Two were condos. The other 10 were single-family homes. Only one, 1324 Cabrillo Ave., sold for less than $1 million, and that one sold for $950,000, almost 6 percent above its asking price of $898,000.

Including 1324 Cabrillo, the average price of SFRs that completed sales between June 1 and June 11 was $1.399 million. This is very notable, considering the run on sub-$1 million properties that depressed Burlingame’s bottom line in 2010.

What’s more significant to me is the amount of time each home spent on the market before going into escrow. For one, it explains the thin collection of open house signs I saw on El Camino.

Only one home, 1523 Alturas Dr., spent significant time for sale before finding a buyer. Alturas is also the only one to have a price reduction, from $1.429 to $1.359 million. On April 4 it finally sold, after eight months on the market, for $1.178, closing escrow on June 1.

You might be saying to yourself, “Okay, well, that sounds like 2009 all over again.” For those sellers, it may as well have been. For everyone else, the story was very different. The other ten single-family homes were pending an average of 8.2 days after hitting the market.

So far in June, single-family residences have sold for 98.1 percent of asking price. If we remove aberrant 1523 Alturas Dr., the remaining SFRs fetched 99.9 percent of asking. Double-dip or no, the numbers from the first third of June show a very active market. No June swoon here.

One thing everyone should know: 2005 is over and it’s not coming back. Listing your home and getting close to asking price in less than two weeks is nothing to wring your hands over, however. Add June’s early numbers to May’s positive trends – and the shortage of colorful open house signs along El Camino – and you can safely say that whatever is happening in Las Vegas, Florida and the Central Valley is not what’s happening in Burlingame.