In the past we’ve provided updates on the overall Tri-Valley real estate market which we will certainly continue to do from time to time. Based on your feedback however, it was suggested that we provide a similar update for each individual city which is great idea. Moving forward we will feature one Tri-Valley city at a time, this month starting with Pleasanton.
Overall, our Pleasanton real estate market continues to do well. What will come as a surprise is what appears to have happened to sale prices.
As you’ll see in the graph below, the median Pleasanton sale price in the last two months has taken a rather significant dip. Does this mean home prices have really dropped by approximately 15% since September?
Most of us know that numbers and statistics at times can be deceiving and thankfully we believe this is the case in median sold price. Upon further inspection of the underlying data, we observe that prior to October, there we are lot more higher end properties (greater than $1.5M) sold however this has dropped significantly in the past two months indicating perhaps a more challenging time at present in the upper segment of the market. Comparing this month to the same time last year we see a similar trend which in part is due to the seasonal cycle of sales. What appears to be more likely examining the underlying data more closely is that Pleasanton home prices have declined by somewhere around 5% overall.
Let’s look at the number of Pleasanton homes under contract which is a very good measure of the health of the market.
As depicted in the graph below the number of Pleasanton homes going under contract each month remains strong reflecting how desirable Pleasanton continues to be for its top rated schools, wonderful downtown, parks and easy BART among many other reasons.
Compared with this time a year ago, Pleasanton homes going under contract is up 24% and in fact activity overall this year has been much stronger than last year. This is definitely encouraging news for sellers.
So just how many Pleasanton homes are there for sale compared with the number of homes actually closing contract each month?
If we first examine the the red columns below in the Pleasanton Supply and Demand graph, we can see that the number of single family homes for sale in Pleasanton peaked in July and has been following the typical seasonal decline as we head towards the holidays (can’t believe Thanksgiving was just last week week).
Perhaps more importantly from a market conditions perspective is that the number of Pleasanton homes for sale versus a year ago is down 20% which continues to be welcome news for sellers due to less competition.
On the flip side, there is some buyer frustration due to less homes to choose from. Looking at the green bars on the graph, we can see that the number of Pleasanton homes sold each month remains relatively constant, with homes selling no matter what time of the year it is.
In fact, if we take a look at the next graph, you’ll see a significant change in the favor of the seller over a year ago.
The months of supply of housing inventory in Pleasanton is another good measure of market conditions. This is a measure of how long it would take for all the Pleasanton homes on the market to sell if no new homes came on the market.
This measure is based on the number of Pleasanton homes for sale and the number that sold in the given month.
As you can see from this graph, the inventory for single family homes in the Pleasanton has certainly declined significantly from where it was 12 months ago. In fact months of supply is down 47% compared with a year ago putting us at just a little over 2 months of supply at present. In contrast, the national average is still currently over 10 months of supply with.
A market is considered to be balanced if the months of supply is in the 4-6 month range.
Foreclosures and Short Sales in Pleasanton (Single Family Homes)
Like everywhere else, Pleasanton too is impacted by Short Sales and Foreclosures (Distress Homes). The chart below gives a visual depiction of regular sales versus distressed sales by both homes currently on the market for sale and those in contract within Pleasanton.
The table below the chart provides you with a further break down by number that are bank owned (REO – Real Estate Owned by Bank) or short sales and by city. As you can see in the second last column of the table below, Distress Properties account for approximately 20% of Pleasanton homes that are currently for sale compared with 30% for the Tri-Valley. Of those in contract, over half are distressed properties.
With that said, overall the Pleasanton real estate market is doing well and has been less impacted by distressed properties than it’s neighboring cities.
| City | Active | Pending | #REO Active | #REO Pending | %Active REO |
#Short Sales Active |
#Short Sales Pending |
% Active Short Sales |
% Active Distressed |
% Pending Distressed |
| Dublin | 43 | 85 | 5 | 12 | 11.6% | 11 | 47 | 25.6% | 37.2% | 69.4% |
| Livermore | 186 | 176 | 23 | 17 | 12.4% | 52 | 110 | 28.0% | 40.3% | 72.2% |
| Pleasanton | 117 | 98 | 8 | 7 | 6.8% | 16 | 47 | 13.7% | 20.5% | 55.1% |
| San Ramon | 119 | 132 | 12 | 14 | 10.1% | 18 | 72 | 15.1% | 25.2% | 65.2% |
| Total | 465 | 491 | 48 | 50 | 10.3% | 97 | 276 | 20.9% | 31.2% | 66.4% |
© 2011, graphs provided by Terradatum and its suppliers using data from the Bay East Association of Realtors. Information deemed accurate but not guaranteed.
