Marin median home price at $1.7M in ‘adjusting’ market
The median price of a detached home in Marin County dipped to $1.7 million last month as the market heads into an autumn of economic uncertainty.
The figure is a decline from $1.8 million in July and no change from the prior August, according to the latest data from the county assessor’s office. Sales fell from 277 in August 2021 to 192 last month, a decline of 44%.
Marin’s median price has increased 42% in just five years, rising from $1.2 million in August 2017. It broke through the $2 million threshold in April and May this year before drifting back down.
Scott Woods, a real estate agent for Compass, said the market is “definitely adjusting.”
Woods represented the seller for a four-bedroom home on Ridge Road in Tiburon that sold last month for $8.495 million. Six months earlier, he said, the property would have received multiple offers, but instead it drew three prospects and a single offer. It sold for $8.389 million, according to the real estate data firm Zillow.
“Sellers, if they’re smart, are having to adjust their expectations and price closer to where they’re going to sell,” said Woods, who has been an agent for 14 years. “The values are still hanging in there, but activity is dropping. Things are sitting on the market for a while.”
Robert Eyler, chief economist for Marin Economic Forum, said forecasts are calling for a slowdown or contraction in the market. He said the recent period of price escalation has been followed by profit-taking from owners, buyer fatigue, a surge in credit costs and the migration of workers.
“We should expect buyers not to have to jump at everything on the market,” said Eyler, a dean at Sonoma State University.
However, he said Marin’s market is such that new building permits are primarily for apartments, condominiums and townhomes. He said this will offer some price protection for detached homes.
“There’s no reason to believe that we’re going to see the same or similar contraction we did in 2006 to 2009,” he said. “We should not expect a 35-40% decline that we saw in the Great Recession.”
At the upper end of the Marin market last month, three detached homes in Belvedere sold for a median price of nearly $3.5 million; three sold in Sausalito for a median of $3.4 million; and nine sold in Tiburon for a median of $3 million, according to the assessor’s office. The median price in Ross was $3.795 million, but the figure is based on a single sale.
Madeline Schaider, the agent who represented the buyer in the Ross deal, said some properties in Marin are sitting unsold and some sellers are cutting prices. But she noted that inventory remains low.
“There’s still a demand for houses,” said Schaider, who has been an agent for more than 30 years. “However, buyers are definitely having some pause due to interest rates, the stock market, inflation.”
In other parts of Marin, median prices for detached homes last month included $2.35 million in Mill Valley; $2.25 million in Larkspur; $1.925 million in Corte Madera; $1.9 million in unincorporated areas; nearly $1.5 million in San Rafael and Fairfax; $1.35 million in San Anselmo; and nearly $1.2 million in Novato.
In the condominium and townhome market, the median price in Marin was $875,000 last month, down slightly from July and up about 9% from August 2021. The county reported 75 sales of attached homes last month, down from 86 the prior year.
Statewide, the median price of detached homes was $839,460 last month, according to the California Association of Realtors. That was up 0.7% from July and up 1.4% from August 2021. Home sales rose 6.1% from July and declined 24.4% from August 2021.
In the Bay Area, the median price of detached homes was $1.25 million in August, down 3.8% from July and down 1.2% from the prior year, the association reported. Sales rose nearly 10% from July and fell about 29% from the previous August.
“It’s encouraging to see that August’s sales pace rebounded above an annualized 300,000 units sold,” said Jordan Levine, the association’s chief economist. “Although we do not expect a rapid bounce-back because the Fed is expected to continue raising interest rates to get inflation under control, the monthly increase in closed and pending sales suggests that the market may have already priced in most of the rate increases to date.”
The U.S. weekly average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.29% as of Thursday, according to Freddie Mac, the federally chartered mortgage company. A year ago, the average was 2.88%.