Home sales are down significantly throughout the Bay Area, according to the latest numbers.
The California Association of Realtors says overall sales across the region fell more than 19% compared to a year ago. There are two factors at play: higher interest rates and low inventory of homes for sale.
In Santa Clara County, sales are down 14%.
Joanne Fraser, past president of the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors, said sales are down because fewer homeowners are opting to sell, in part, because they don't want to give up their current low interest rate to upgrade to a bigger house.
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"We have an inventory problem," Fraser said. "Obviously, when you don’t have much inventory, you definitely have fewer sales."
The low inventory is also prompting many homes to be snatched up fast. In Santa Clara County, the median amount of time it took to sell a home in June was eight days.
While higher interest rates may be scaring off first-time homebuyers, so are the prices, which in most cases have not dropped. In June, the median home price in Santa Clara County was $1.825 million, up 0.3% from the previous year.
"In Silicon Valley, if you're talking about Santa Clara County, what we’re seeing is we're still having multiple offers. We're having prices in the county selling for about 103% of the list price. So, if something's priced at $1 million, it's selling at 3% over the listed price."
Because there are so few homes on the market, when there is an open house, agents said they often get 100 people coming to check out the house.
"In the second half of this year, most likely prices are going to stay somewhat high but may slow down a little bit in the next couple of months or so," California Association of Realtors Deputy Chief Economist Oscar Wei said. "And, of course, if we start seeing interest rates coming down, that will be good news for buyers and also sellers."
