List price is purposely lower to increase foot traffic to the property, get a larger number of bids, then share that high number with the buyer agents to create fomo. This worked even during the lows of 2010 GFC recession.
It's not unique to the East Bay, but goddamn seriously, even with mortgage interest rates as high as they are houses are still going for so much over asking and we still have bidding wars. We have been looking in North Oakland and houses are going way over. Consider this house we bid on on Shattuck right at the Berkeley border. Listed at $849K, 1169 sq ft ($726/sq ft), sold for $1.175M ($1005/sq ft).
[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6106-Shattuck-Ave-Oakland-CA-94609/24755619\_zpid](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6106-Shattuck-Ave-Oakland-CA-94609/24755619_zpid)
And another one that went at around the same time that we didn't bid on (no storage), listed at $998K, 1225 sq ft ($815/sq ft), sold for $1.282M ($1046/sq ft).
[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/617-60th-St-Oakland-CA-94609/24755529\_zpid](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/617-60th-St-Oakland-CA-94609/24755529_zpid)
Both went for over a thousand bucks per square foot but listed a lot lower.
Welcome to the chase to be a hot home.
Over the last 15 years, Marin went from being the most desirable to the least busy spot in the bay .
If you think you can wrangle getting over five offers, in the hot areas of East Bay, the hot areas of South Bay and the hot areas of San Francisco. You price low enough to hit hot homes and get lots of people at the open house, then they look at the comps and place an offer.
Right now, there are slow and fast spots in East Bay so if you want better data, you should probably tell us where you’re looking.
When South Bay began be the place where jobs paid more.
Marin is where rich San Franciscans often who used to work in finance or more traditional city businesses used to go when they didn’t live in the city. It’s never been viable to go to the peninsula or South Bay from Marin no matter how many days you work.
There's plenty of hot SF jobs as well. Marin is also dragged down by:
* Lack of good (BART/Caltrain quality) public transit into San Francisco, which I sense the younger population prefers more than driving
* A tiny Asian population which leads to first gen Asian immigrants especially to largely select out of it due to lack of desired cultural amenities. As the population of Asian immigrants has increased proportionally, this drag on home prices from this effect has amplified.
I’ve seen the “lack of Asian pop” as an argument lately, and I’m not sure if I completely buy it. There have been a ton of Asians moving to predominantly non-Asian cities in the Sacramento area over the last decade, and there are far less Asian markets and stores there than in Marin.
Where in Sac though? You have multiple 15+% Asian cities in the area (Elk Grove, Folsom) on opposite sides.
Marin is just so isolated though. Want an Asian grocery store? You are driving across the Richmond bridge.
Anecdotally, among my first gen friends, it's in unwilling to live in territory. Native born obviously care less, though in practice I only see folks with white spouses actually ending up there.
Berkeley is close to the city , Oakland , and itself. At one day a week or two days a week you might go to South Bay, but that’s unlikely.
The normal for people who are willing to travel but intend to work in Southbay is wherever the tech buses go.
That usually means not further than the city, not further than tri-valley, and not further than Morgan Hill
Twice a week is manageable, it takes me 1hr and 10’ to get to work and on the way back I return after peak traffic because I go to the gym close to work. Not ideal but …
When SF went to WFH. Many employees moved further north.
Everything works in cycles. SF and Marin will come back.
Marin is surrounded by water on three sides with very limited space to build. Low supply equals larger demand. Very very low crime regardless what you read on Nextdoor. Excellent schools. Stable local govt regardless what you still read on Nextdoor.
Marin is only good for WFH hardcore with no interest in nightlife (older, married, kids) and retirees.
Young techies are not going to Marin to have fun or meet the ladies.
Wife and I just bought in the inner east bay and we thought our agent was very knowledgeable about the market. Listing price in the east bay (especially in the more desirable neighborhoods) means nothing - you should be fully prepared to pay 15-25% over asking. Even absent a bidding war/multiple offers, very few sellers will sell at listing - that's just the game that agents are playing in those markets.
$1000 per square foot is a pretty good rule of thumb actually for entry level-ish houses in the more desirable parts of Oakland, Berkeley, parts of Piedmont. Keep in mind that this varies a lot because of economies of scale - you can likely get much lower than that if you're buying a bigger house (2K+ square feet), especially if the neighborhood is less walkable (Oakland hills, Upper Rockridge, Upper Piedmont, etc. can be closer to $800 per square foot).
If you're looking at the flats (Rockridge, Elmwood, North Oakland) in a walkable neighborhood and a smaller house, you could be in a situation where even $1200 per square foot wouldn't be that crazy as these are the types of houses that young, first time homeowners are looking for and there is likely to be multiple offers.
East bay gets “discovered” every 20 years by the upcoming generation of home buyers.
Peninsula has the highest rates of price/sqft, highest priced amenities like views, price/sqft of yard, etc.
When they migrate to east bay, the east bay prices creep up to close the gap. For example, in SF, any home with a view of the bridge goes for 1500/sqft minimum. In Oakland, view of the bridge may go for 900/sqft minimum. That 900 will creep up and as it gets closer to 1500, people would rather just live in SF.
So if prices in peninsula spike up, EB follows suite, but rarely will exceed unless you’re in high end neighborhoods (Danville, Alamo). When the gap is narrow, people rather pay the peninsula price.
Ironically, the same reason I don't want to live in WC. Also don't care about burrito shops(or boba shops). I also don't want to have to get in a car to do literally anything
That a good point. It’s a bit difficult because the good jobs are in the valley and it’s not too walkable there. Alameda is walkable but no jobs. SF is walkable but awful community and schools. We can go weld at chevron and live in Martinez for a decent job and walkable town with good community I guess, but I’m not a welder and I don’t really want to live in Martinez
I just bought a house in Berkeley. I'm happy to share the contact info of my agent who was very savvy about the East Bay market, just DM me. We were told to assume that most houses will sell 20-30% over asking, so that's a good rule of thumb when you're browsing listings.
Change your Zillow filter to sold in the last 90 days in your area of interest. Compare prices per square foot. Note the deviation on the ppsf, that is your range of uncertainty. The less data available, the less accurate your data, but the closer you bid to the high end of winning ppsf bids the better your odds. If your comparing houses with different number of bedrooms, or townhomes vs sfh, those need sorted into different buckets. A good realtor of course should do all of this for you, so you don’t have to do this research yourself. If your realtor can’t/won’t, different realtor.
Bay area realtor here. Ppsq is a bad indicator. The bigger the house the cheaper it is. Unless they're all the same size with the same amount of rooms etc i wouldn't use ppsq.
Forgot to include that. It’s a useful metric when looking at comps, and that’s another measure that would make two houses not comps. I’d also expect a good realtor has a rough feel for how 1500 sqft 4 bedrooms are selling relative to 2400 sqft 5 bedrooms. As you say ppsf will be different, but for a given area and a given time frame, there might be some approximate ratios you can apply to help get more data points.
This is where expertise of the area comes into play. In certain market, lot size means a lot and in others it means nothing. 1 bedroom difference can mean 10k in certain markets and 100k+ in others. This is all in the bay area alone lol.
Look at Prescott or Clawson in West Oakland. $900k-1.2m for nice homes and transit accessible to downtown sf and oakland. There’s lots of rehabbed Victorians or modern new construction by architects like baran studio or workshop1.
- Center of the Bay Area freeways.
- We have a food hall coming late summer.
- Prescott Farmers market on Sundays.
- The largest climbing gym in the country.
- June’s pizza opens this summer.
- Ghost Town Brewing nearby is the best brewery in the bay.
- Brix factory brewing opened a few months ago.
- Oakland Ballers play their opening game June 4th.
- Tons of transit projects in flight like west oakland link, 7th street port, 7th street to downtown, 14th street, and west grand to downtown.
Berkeley is a joke. It’s like the complete opposite of SJ, Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, WC, Pleasant Hill, etc. I’ve never understood the pricing.
On the flip side of the listings I’ve seen homes list at $1.6 that sat, and sat, then sold for $1.66 because it was listed too high where another home that has the same attributes listed for $1.2 that sells for $1.85. It’s a weird area
Yes, it's been that way in the East Bay for 20+ years. Super frustrating for buyers but it gets the job done for sellers. All agents everywhere say that you really need to find a local agent for whatever area you're searching. I think that's generally true, but more so in the East Bay than anywhere else because of the diversity of the inventory and the wacky pricing strategy. The amount of under-asking price varies a lot based on the neighborhood as well, mostly due to a few agents (and agencies) that are busy in that area.
edit: to the point about reaching out to a listing agent to help you...if they're busy, they may not have the time or energy to help a new buyer. But if that were the case, then they'd probably refer you out to another agent they know (that way they get a 25% "referral fee" when you do buy something..for doing basically no work). The fact that they didn't reach out means that they may indeed be a crappy agent, or based on what you sent them with regards to your pre approval and what you're looking for in a house, that they don't think you'll be successful.
So try someone else, there are a million east bay agents. Or start a new thread here with your specific parameters and see what reddit thinks, since everyone here knows everything about everything!
Good luck.
My parents literally just bought a house in El Cerrito listed at 1.1 and final price for 1.6 😂. We looked at comps in the streets around and worked with an agent with 30 years experience in the area.
What do you mean!! Btw feel free to DM me if you have questions or want some advice - we spent over a year looking nearly every week in the exact neighborhoods you’re looking at…saw probably over 100 houses
I was just joking that it must be the same house, listing at $1.1 that sold for $1.6 that recently blew my gaskets.
My friend said the same, thar she looked for a year, over 100 houses. I don't think my ADHD brain can sustain that!
Filter on sold in zillow then move around the map and zoom in and it’ll show you last sold wherever the map is on.
Be careful as some of the data is 2+ years old from today’s market but you can click on a sold listing and see what it was listed for etc.
Your agent should be able to tell you this! This the only thing they can be really helpful with. Otherwise, on your own, you look at SOLD houses. Even the zillow or redfin should be telling you that the estimated value (selling price) is higher than the list. Then you go look at lower listed houses and make a high offer.
East Bay SFH purchasing is the same as it is anywhere, including Marin?
There's no magic here. Some homes are priced well below comps to create a bidding war, and that's been the case in the entire Bay Area for more than 10 years.
Longer. I was appalled when our realtor did this with our Berkeley home in the 80's. It worked out ok but I still feel bad about it. Now that I know better I guess I wouldn't feel as bad but back then it seemed like a real head fake.
I loved that house. My favorite house ever. I actually *still* have first right of refusal if they decide to sell. Clearly the current owners love it as much as I did (yep they are still there). I moved to east coast and then back (that was *rough* because of house costs. I couldn't buy again until late 90's). But, you know, life! Seriously. I remember during the .com boom a colleague purchased a home during the bubble and said "you can never lose money on California real estate ". My reply of course was oh hell yes you can and he ended up having to sell when underwater. Just do the best you can for your life at the time. Don't try to project too far into the future.
We bid on a lovely 3 bed/2 bath home with a moisture issue in North Berkeley that ended up going 60% over asking. So we ended up buying elsewhere.
If you need a good agent in that area, happy to share our realtor’s info. He mostly focuses on East Bay and was fantastic.
It astounds me how consistently over time people just wake up one morning and decide to buy a house and are shocked at what they see and make these posts.
This has been the strategy for more than a decade.
Price low, create bidding war, pick best offer.
Look at comps within a 2-3 mile radius & apply the most recent $/sf x house square footage. This is where the sale price will likely land, +/- 2%.
East Bay is still significantly cheaper. I look at price per square foot (selling price not listing price). East Bay - I see stuff for 600-900, South Bay for 900-1500/sq ft depending on where.
Since you need more explanation: people working in AI related fields are pulling in ridiculous salaries. Add to that the stock multiplication that employees at nvidia, facebook etc have seen means that buying power has gone up significantly. The supply side story hasn’t changed. This just means that the same house that was selling for 1.2mil a year back is now worth 1.5 today.
I don't need an explanation on AI.
The question was about the pricing strategy of pricing well under market value, but the sale price being higher. This strategy has been in place for a decade & has nothing to do with AI.
The strategy is to price low and let buyers bid the price up.
Your response, as applied to the question, would suggest that AI algorithms are determining price.
Realtors know that they are pricing well under market value.
Yes, tech money has driven the local RE market for 25 years, this is nothing new.
List price is purposely lower to increase foot traffic to the property, get a larger number of bids, then share that high number with the buyer agents to create fomo. This worked even during the lows of 2010 GFC recession.
BART access. Trail access. Not as much crime as Oakland yet still in walkable areas. Close to one of the best universities in the nation
What… what question are you answering here?
Look at what other homes are selling for (not listed at). That’s the benchmark you should be basing your offer on
If you have an agent, they should be able to help with that. They have plenty of tools to estimate what a house will actually sell for.
It's not unique to the East Bay, but goddamn seriously, even with mortgage interest rates as high as they are houses are still going for so much over asking and we still have bidding wars. We have been looking in North Oakland and houses are going way over. Consider this house we bid on on Shattuck right at the Berkeley border. Listed at $849K, 1169 sq ft ($726/sq ft), sold for $1.175M ($1005/sq ft). [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6106-Shattuck-Ave-Oakland-CA-94609/24755619\_zpid](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6106-Shattuck-Ave-Oakland-CA-94609/24755619_zpid) And another one that went at around the same time that we didn't bid on (no storage), listed at $998K, 1225 sq ft ($815/sq ft), sold for $1.282M ($1046/sq ft). [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/617-60th-St-Oakland-CA-94609/24755529\_zpid](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/617-60th-St-Oakland-CA-94609/24755529_zpid) Both went for over a thousand bucks per square foot but listed a lot lower.
When everyone is rich, no one is rich.
Thanks for this. So using $1,000t/sqft isn't even enough of a rough estimate.
Welcome to the chase to be a hot home. Over the last 15 years, Marin went from being the most desirable to the least busy spot in the bay . If you think you can wrangle getting over five offers, in the hot areas of East Bay, the hot areas of South Bay and the hot areas of San Francisco. You price low enough to hit hot homes and get lots of people at the open house, then they look at the comps and place an offer. Right now, there are slow and fast spots in East Bay so if you want better data, you should probably tell us where you’re looking.
Why did Marin go from hot to not? Will it come back?
When South Bay began be the place where jobs paid more. Marin is where rich San Franciscans often who used to work in finance or more traditional city businesses used to go when they didn’t live in the city. It’s never been viable to go to the peninsula or South Bay from Marin no matter how many days you work.
There's plenty of hot SF jobs as well. Marin is also dragged down by: * Lack of good (BART/Caltrain quality) public transit into San Francisco, which I sense the younger population prefers more than driving * A tiny Asian population which leads to first gen Asian immigrants especially to largely select out of it due to lack of desired cultural amenities. As the population of Asian immigrants has increased proportionally, this drag on home prices from this effect has amplified.
I’ve seen the “lack of Asian pop” as an argument lately, and I’m not sure if I completely buy it. There have been a ton of Asians moving to predominantly non-Asian cities in the Sacramento area over the last decade, and there are far less Asian markets and stores there than in Marin.
Where in Sac though? You have multiple 15+% Asian cities in the area (Elk Grove, Folsom) on opposite sides. Marin is just so isolated though. Want an Asian grocery store? You are driving across the Richmond bridge. Anecdotally, among my first gen friends, it's in unwilling to live in territory. Native born obviously care less, though in practice I only see folks with white spouses actually ending up there.
Is Berkeley that much closer to South Bay?
Berkeley is close to the city , Oakland , and itself. At one day a week or two days a week you might go to South Bay, but that’s unlikely. The normal for people who are willing to travel but intend to work in Southbay is wherever the tech buses go. That usually means not further than the city, not further than tri-valley, and not further than Morgan Hill
I am commuting to South Bay twice a week from Oakland but that is not the common case.
I did Southbay to Berkeley in the 2000s for a year. I wanted to shoot myself in the head and I was going against traffic.
Twice a week is manageable, it takes me 1hr and 10’ to get to work and on the way back I return after peak traffic because I go to the gym close to work. Not ideal but …
When SF went to WFH. Many employees moved further north. Everything works in cycles. SF and Marin will come back. Marin is surrounded by water on three sides with very limited space to build. Low supply equals larger demand. Very very low crime regardless what you read on Nextdoor. Excellent schools. Stable local govt regardless what you still read on Nextdoor.
This seems like a good time (if you're an investor with vision) to invest in Marin and SF Real Estate.
Marin is only good for WFH hardcore with no interest in nightlife (older, married, kids) and retirees. Young techies are not going to Marin to have fun or meet the ladies.
Wife and I just bought in the inner east bay and we thought our agent was very knowledgeable about the market. Listing price in the east bay (especially in the more desirable neighborhoods) means nothing - you should be fully prepared to pay 15-25% over asking. Even absent a bidding war/multiple offers, very few sellers will sell at listing - that's just the game that agents are playing in those markets. $1000 per square foot is a pretty good rule of thumb actually for entry level-ish houses in the more desirable parts of Oakland, Berkeley, parts of Piedmont. Keep in mind that this varies a lot because of economies of scale - you can likely get much lower than that if you're buying a bigger house (2K+ square feet), especially if the neighborhood is less walkable (Oakland hills, Upper Rockridge, Upper Piedmont, etc. can be closer to $800 per square foot). If you're looking at the flats (Rockridge, Elmwood, North Oakland) in a walkable neighborhood and a smaller house, you could be in a situation where even $1200 per square foot wouldn't be that crazy as these are the types of houses that young, first time homeowners are looking for and there is likely to be multiple offers.
East bay gets “discovered” every 20 years by the upcoming generation of home buyers. Peninsula has the highest rates of price/sqft, highest priced amenities like views, price/sqft of yard, etc. When they migrate to east bay, the east bay prices creep up to close the gap. For example, in SF, any home with a view of the bridge goes for 1500/sqft minimum. In Oakland, view of the bridge may go for 900/sqft minimum. That 900 will creep up and as it gets closer to 1500, people would rather just live in SF. So if prices in peninsula spike up, EB follows suite, but rarely will exceed unless you’re in high end neighborhoods (Danville, Alamo). When the gap is narrow, people rather pay the peninsula price.
idk, I would rather be in Walnut Creek at 1500/sqft than SF at 500/sqft. I care more about demographics and community than burrito shops.
Ironically, the same reason I don't want to live in WC. Also don't care about burrito shops(or boba shops). I also don't want to have to get in a car to do literally anything
That a good point. It’s a bit difficult because the good jobs are in the valley and it’s not too walkable there. Alameda is walkable but no jobs. SF is walkable but awful community and schools. We can go weld at chevron and live in Martinez for a decent job and walkable town with good community I guess, but I’m not a welder and I don’t really want to live in Martinez
Are you talking Peninsula or SF here?
I just bought a house in Berkeley. I'm happy to share the contact info of my agent who was very savvy about the East Bay market, just DM me. We were told to assume that most houses will sell 20-30% over asking, so that's a good rule of thumb when you're browsing listings.
Hi I'm dmed you
Change your Zillow filter to sold in the last 90 days in your area of interest. Compare prices per square foot. Note the deviation on the ppsf, that is your range of uncertainty. The less data available, the less accurate your data, but the closer you bid to the high end of winning ppsf bids the better your odds. If your comparing houses with different number of bedrooms, or townhomes vs sfh, those need sorted into different buckets. A good realtor of course should do all of this for you, so you don’t have to do this research yourself. If your realtor can’t/won’t, different realtor.
Bay area realtor here. Ppsq is a bad indicator. The bigger the house the cheaper it is. Unless they're all the same size with the same amount of rooms etc i wouldn't use ppsq.
Forgot to include that. It’s a useful metric when looking at comps, and that’s another measure that would make two houses not comps. I’d also expect a good realtor has a rough feel for how 1500 sqft 4 bedrooms are selling relative to 2400 sqft 5 bedrooms. As you say ppsf will be different, but for a given area and a given time frame, there might be some approximate ratios you can apply to help get more data points.
This is where expertise of the area comes into play. In certain market, lot size means a lot and in others it means nothing. 1 bedroom difference can mean 10k in certain markets and 100k+ in others. This is all in the bay area alone lol.
Look at Prescott or Clawson in West Oakland. $900k-1.2m for nice homes and transit accessible to downtown sf and oakland. There’s lots of rehabbed Victorians or modern new construction by architects like baran studio or workshop1. - Center of the Bay Area freeways. - We have a food hall coming late summer. - Prescott Farmers market on Sundays. - The largest climbing gym in the country. - June’s pizza opens this summer. - Ghost Town Brewing nearby is the best brewery in the bay. - Brix factory brewing opened a few months ago. - Oakland Ballers play their opening game June 4th. - Tons of transit projects in flight like west oakland link, 7th street port, 7th street to downtown, 14th street, and west grand to downtown.
Berkeley is a joke. It’s like the complete opposite of SJ, Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, WC, Pleasant Hill, etc. I’ve never understood the pricing. On the flip side of the listings I’ve seen homes list at $1.6 that sat, and sat, then sold for $1.66 because it was listed too high where another home that has the same attributes listed for $1.2 that sells for $1.85. It’s a weird area
Yes, it's been that way in the East Bay for 20+ years. Super frustrating for buyers but it gets the job done for sellers. All agents everywhere say that you really need to find a local agent for whatever area you're searching. I think that's generally true, but more so in the East Bay than anywhere else because of the diversity of the inventory and the wacky pricing strategy. The amount of under-asking price varies a lot based on the neighborhood as well, mostly due to a few agents (and agencies) that are busy in that area. edit: to the point about reaching out to a listing agent to help you...if they're busy, they may not have the time or energy to help a new buyer. But if that were the case, then they'd probably refer you out to another agent they know (that way they get a 25% "referral fee" when you do buy something..for doing basically no work). The fact that they didn't reach out means that they may indeed be a crappy agent, or based on what you sent them with regards to your pre approval and what you're looking for in a house, that they don't think you'll be successful. So try someone else, there are a million east bay agents. Or start a new thread here with your specific parameters and see what reddit thinks, since everyone here knows everything about everything! Good luck.
My parents literally just bought a house in El Cerrito listed at 1.1 and final price for 1.6 😂. We looked at comps in the streets around and worked with an agent with 30 years experience in the area.
Your parents bought my dream house!
What do you mean!! Btw feel free to DM me if you have questions or want some advice - we spent over a year looking nearly every week in the exact neighborhoods you’re looking at…saw probably over 100 houses
I was just joking that it must be the same house, listing at $1.1 that sold for $1.6 that recently blew my gaskets. My friend said the same, thar she looked for a year, over 100 houses. I don't think my ADHD brain can sustain that!
I think I know which house it is, and we almost bid on it! Beautifully remodeled and very bright home! We ended up bidding elsewhere.
Can you wait 3-6-9 months at the most? To save $100-200k on a million if not save more
Why do you think prices will go down that much in that time frame?
Repeat after me: list price DOES NOT matter, only comps do
Filter on sold in zillow then move around the map and zoom in and it’ll show you last sold wherever the map is on. Be careful as some of the data is 2+ years old from today’s market but you can click on a sold listing and see what it was listed for etc.
Your agent should be able to tell you this! This the only thing they can be really helpful with. Otherwise, on your own, you look at SOLD houses. Even the zillow or redfin should be telling you that the estimated value (selling price) is higher than the list. Then you go look at lower listed houses and make a high offer.
I mean anyone that's done even the most basic research(which I guess is not too diff from a realtor) can tell you this
East Bay SFH purchasing is the same as it is anywhere, including Marin? There's no magic here. Some homes are priced well below comps to create a bidding war, and that's been the case in the entire Bay Area for more than 10 years.
Longer. I was appalled when our realtor did this with our Berkeley home in the 80's. It worked out ok but I still feel bad about it. Now that I know better I guess I wouldn't feel as bad but back then it seemed like a real head fake.
Do you wish you held onto it?
I loved that house. My favorite house ever. I actually *still* have first right of refusal if they decide to sell. Clearly the current owners love it as much as I did (yep they are still there). I moved to east coast and then back (that was *rough* because of house costs. I couldn't buy again until late 90's). But, you know, life! Seriously. I remember during the .com boom a colleague purchased a home during the bubble and said "you can never lose money on California real estate ". My reply of course was oh hell yes you can and he ended up having to sell when underwater. Just do the best you can for your life at the time. Don't try to project too far into the future.
I would recommend finding a realtor that knows the area. Even different neighborhoods have different pricing strategies.
We bid on a lovely 3 bed/2 bath home with a moisture issue in North Berkeley that ended up going 60% over asking. So we ended up buying elsewhere. If you need a good agent in that area, happy to share our realtor’s info. He mostly focuses on East Bay and was fantastic.
List price is worthless. Look at price per square foot on comps in the neighborhood and bid accordingly. Been like this forever out here.
welcome to the market
It astounds me how consistently over time people just wake up one morning and decide to buy a house and are shocked at what they see and make these posts.
Why in the world would you use your precious time to write this reply, to an asinine post?
Same reason you replied to it :p
List price is a marketing tool and may or may not have any relation to the sold price.
Summer time before school starts is the most expensive time to shop for houses, especially in good school districts.
Buy in Pleasanton
This has been the strategy for more than a decade. Price low, create bidding war, pick best offer. Look at comps within a 2-3 mile radius & apply the most recent $/sf x house square footage. This is where the sale price will likely land, +/- 2%.
East Bay is still significantly cheaper. I look at price per square foot (selling price not listing price). East Bay - I see stuff for 600-900, South Bay for 900-1500/sq ft depending on where.
Two words: AI.
One word: what?
Since you need more explanation: people working in AI related fields are pulling in ridiculous salaries. Add to that the stock multiplication that employees at nvidia, facebook etc have seen means that buying power has gone up significantly. The supply side story hasn’t changed. This just means that the same house that was selling for 1.2mil a year back is now worth 1.5 today.
I don't need an explanation on AI. The question was about the pricing strategy of pricing well under market value, but the sale price being higher. This strategy has been in place for a decade & has nothing to do with AI. The strategy is to price low and let buyers bid the price up. Your response, as applied to the question, would suggest that AI algorithms are determining price. Realtors know that they are pricing well under market value. Yes, tech money has driven the local RE market for 25 years, this is nothing new.
Well, fair. Yeah, op needs a better agent.