A picture really is worth a thousand words. You can see in the first chart that the peak of the average sales price in Marin County was in September 2007–a bit of conundrum being that also in September 2007 is when the banks turned off the “free money faucet” so there were the fewest sold homes in that same month.
We all know what happened after that.
So while more than 80% of surveyed economists agree that the recession over, they also warn that recovery will be painful as those without jobs will likely remain without jobs for quite a while.
Residents of Marin County used to think that we were somewhat immune to the woes of the rest of the world, we are consistently seeing about 25 – 35% of all sales in Marin County are distress sales of some form.
What all these reports don’t show is that many of the purchases are cash purchases. I even had a buyer who is currently living China, returning home to Marin in a few years, buy their home sight unseen because they felt that this is the bottom and now is the time to buy.
Of course they had me and relatives here with their feet on the ground to help them with photos and videos, but I thought that was pretty remarkable.
I, for one, am optimistic.
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