Pleasanton Market Shows Mixed Signals in October

The Pleasanton real estate market showed some mixed results in October. For the city of Pleasanton, the inventory of available single family homes dropped for the 3rd straight month, ending at 227 homes available. The peak this year was in July, when there were 244 homes on the market at the end of the month. That is the good news. The bad news is that the decline in inventory was due to normal seasonal factors, and not an increase in sales. In fact, pending sales of single family homes in Pleasanton for the month of October declined sharply from September, coming in at 27 units as compared to 45 in September. Again, this is not unusual for this time of year. But this is the lowest number of pending sales in at least 3 years. And just for the sake of comparison, October of 2005 had 59 pending sales that month. Here is a graph of available inventory and pending sales for Pleasanton since January of 2004 (click on graph to enlarge)



The low end of the Pleasanton market, represented by homes under $1 million, showed results that mirror the market as a whole, with both a decline in inventory and pending sales (click on graph to enlarge)



The Pleasanton mid range market ($1 million to $2 million) also showed declines in both inventory and sales (click the graph to enlarge)



So where do we go from here? This is a value market. Buyers are searching for a good value (price, condition, location) and are quite content to wait if the value is not there. Sellers who price their homes to reflect a good value will have success, and sellers who refuse to adjust to the market realities will have a very difficult time. There is still activity, but the buyer has to be convinced it is a good value or it will never sell.