Townsend Appraisals

Richmond was hit very badly by the market downturn starting in the autumn of 2006.    It continued to fall until around June in 2009 and now shows  signs of improvement as of February 2010.  North and East Richmond shows this upward trend.

Click on Chart to Enlarge

If you look at the tend of the cost per square foot on the chart on the right you’ll see that market bottomed  out in North and East at about $155 sq ft of gross living area and has since risen to about $175 per square foot.  The average cost of a house here was about$173,000 from February 2009 to August of 2009. Since then it has risen to $186,000 average in the last three  months.

The market is still dominated by distressed sales which includes REO’s which are foreclosures and short sales where the seller is attempting to sell the house for less than is owed.  Of the 26 sales in the last 3 months 69% were distressed sales.

Values in the Montclair neighborhood in Oakland, CA  are holding up fairly well compared with many areas.  Since early 2006 to the present, prices have declined approximately 20% , from about $450/sf to about $360/sf. The market appears to be stabilizing at this time, as it is in much of the Bay Area.

Click on Chart to Enlarge

The chart displayed is a regression analysis of sale in Montclair since 2006.  Each point on the graph is a home sale expressed in $/sf.  This analysis basically draws a trend line equidistant from all points (using a 3rd factor polynomial).  There is a wide variation in price/sf in Montclair.  Views, construction quality, house size, condition, and lot size vary substantially.  All these impact the price/sf.  Web sites for evaluating the value of your house just can’t take this into consideration.  There is still a job for appraisers.

We have been appraising in Rodeo since Nancy first got started in the appraisal business more than 22 years ago.   Rodeo is a particularly dynamic market and very sensitive to the overall forces affecting real estate.  Accordingly, during the up years it rose quickly and  in autumn of 2006, it sank like a stone.

The chart at the right gives you an idea of what I am talking about.  It starts  at the beginning of 2006.  I have plotted the dollars per square foot of  gross living area  of the houses  in Old Rodeo as it changed with time.  The all-time high of $400/sq ft  occurred around mid-summer in 2006 and began to drop rapidly  in the fall.  It continued to plunge downward until around August 2009, where it settled at around $125/sq ft. That was a 69% drop in value! At this point in time we  see the market start to pick up.

Almost all the local sales are foreclosures or short sales. In 2009, there were 67 sales,  50 of which were foreclosures (REOs) and 7 of which were short sales.

Home prices are being set by these distressed sales and this may continue for some time. Nevertheless, it looks like at this point we may have hit bottom as far as prices go.  It may be a good time to buy!