Realtor John Downing from Downing and Company has pulled together some interesting numbers on November 2011 single-family home sales in Bernal Heights. The average sales price last month was $655,000, which as John points out, is down from $682,000 in October. Looking at the charts, it seems the general trend in average home sales prices has been downward over the last year.
Why? What does that mean? I have no idea. Any of our realtor readers care to chime in? Is this a trend? Or just a function of fickle sales inventory?
In the meantime, here’s the November sales data, via Downing & Company:
IMAGES: Downing & Company
Bernalwood 
As a Bernal resident and owner of SF-based Cirios Real Estate, I would say the drop in average sale price is more a function of sale mix and seasonality than a downtrend in prices. Winter is a traditionally slow time in real estate, so few “regular” home sellers will put their home on the market. This leaves bank owned properties, short sales and other distressed sales to dominate the market. These sales typically have lower prices, hence the lower price data.
In November, 5 of 13 sales were bank owned or probate, or 38%. 4-5 more had some other type of “hair” (tenants, lot split, etc) If you go just two months back to September, just 4 of 17 were distressed in some way, or 23%.
Bottom line, monthly sales data should only be interpreted within the broader trend due to strong seasonal effects.
Very helpful! Thank you. I wish we could compare the YoY sales for the same months.
Here ya go: I posted some data to our website: http://ciriosrealestate.com/2011/12/27/bernal-heights-single-family-home-sales-data/.
Monthly sales data is really choppy, so we ran a 3-month rolling average to try and smooth things out (ie, what is the average sale price over the past three months).
Prices in SF, and Bernal in particular, are still bubbly. Average household income in SF is about $60K.
Is Bernal the new Noe Valley? If so, this public school teacher family will soon be priced out, and our sweet neighborhood will be filled with the top 5%. Goodbye artists, teachers, and all your middle class neighbors.
I am tired of the media and folks in general lamenting the fall in housing prices. Shelter is a basic human need. Do we cheer when the price of food goes up?
High housing prices hurt everyone, except the banks that collect interest on your mortgage.
RenV,
How do you suggest Bernal not become the new Noe? Any practical suggestions?
Thought you may enjoy this from earlier this year, we asked the same question about Bernal vs. Noe. http://ciriosrealestate.com/2011/07/11/is-bernal-the-new-noe/
I do agree with the commenter below, it is one thing to lament higher home prices, gentrification, etc, but is there really something that can be done? Broad economic forces are very hard to reverse or stop.
Wow. THANKS!
whats up with 79 Manchester?
What do you mean by What’s up with? It was a Probate sale that was on the market for a long time. They finally dropped the price super low and got it bid back up, ended up closing at $583,000 on November 18th.
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