As the days get shorter and the temperatures drop, our lives experience the ever changing cycles of nature. And yes, our real estate market continues to have ever changing cycles as well.

I keep being asked, “What’s happening in real estate?”  So I thought I’d drop everyone a note, to give you some answers – as I see it.

Question: “How is the market doing?”

Answer:  First, it’s not the same as 2020-2021. These years became frenetic and crazy as a result of the Pandemic with huge price hikes and over asking bidding by buyers.

Everyone seemed to be reflecting on their lives and re-setting priorities and many decided to make changes about where they wanted to live. Plus working remotely  became possible opening up a lot of flexibility for people to live in places not necessarily close to where they worked. So . . . welcome to the Monterey Peninsula!

The market is down considerably from the spikes we saw during Covid; while the first half of the year held up stronger the second half’s decline has been a bit more rapid. 

However, this year we are reaching more normal numbers that are consistent with pre-covid times in terms of volume. We are still ahead in volume of 2018-2019 so we are in a healthy market.

Question: How is the market doing and what’s happening with inventory?

Answer: The market is still pretty strong because inventory is low and demand remains high. We have many buyers with 228 listings available in the Monterey Peninsula markets which is lower than last year, but still very tight.

Question: What is happening with home values?

Answer: Home values are holding up better than transaction numbers. We’ve seen almost half the listings on the market go through price reductions with the average reduction being 9.1%

Last quarter we saw 315 sales that took place with sale prices going for 5.5% below asking on half of the homes. So overall prices are holding up pretty well.

Question: How is Carmel Realty Company doing?

Answer: As the market get tougher, the best perform. We are one of the top brokerages on the Monterey Peninsula that grew this year because our agents are the best. As a matter of fact, we have the highest producing agents as our agents do 44% more volume than any other brokerage. We are a small company, but mighty!

Here I am with my amazing support staff (and many are not pictured). Our CEO, our managers, our transaction coordinator, our marketing and analytics team, our property management team, and accounting. We’ve added concierge services for our second home owners and we have long term and vacation rentals. We pretty much can furnish any kind of real estate need you have.

How could a woman go wrong, with this team behind me?

Call me for any real estate needs you may have.

Recipient of the Carmel Chamber of Commerce Award of Excellence in Real Estate (small) for 2021

Web site:  www. StreetsofCarmel.com