Looking at San Francisco’s March sales data, we continue to see median sales prices and percent of list price received that are slightly lower than 2016’s. Inventory remains exceptionally low and it continues to be a sellers market.

The San Francisco economy remains very robust, but more mixed, as evidenced by a cooling in the commercial real estate leasing market, where rents dipped in 2016 and the sub-leasing market was very strong with a number of companies reducing their footprint.  Also, in the tech sector, industry job reductions increased by 21% in 2016.  Tech is driving the real estate market in San Francisco, so that’s the bell-weather industry to watch.

On the following charts we see that the San Francisco single family home market dipped negligibly in median sales price, down 0.2% year-on-year to $1,350,000. The number of sales rose 3.9% but the number of new listings dropped sharply for the second month in a row, 18.7% fewer than last March. This resulted in a 33% drop in inventory compared to last year, just 1.6 months of supply.

As buyers got slightly more conservative, they lowered their bids on single family homes a little compared to last year, coming in at 108.8% versus 2016’s 111.2%. Condo buyers dropped their overbids slightly as well, 102.3% of list price versus 103.3% last March.

Like the single family homes sector, the condo market also was hit with a sharp decline in new listings, down 25.8% compared to last year. Sales were up by 8.2%, so the combination of two low months of new listings combined with more sales left inventory down 18.5% from last March, at only 2.2 months of supply.

Condo median sales prices are up 4.1% year-on-year to $1,140,000.