[Homes on the market over sixty days in San Francisco. Image Credit: Redfin]
The Chronicle attempts to explain the Bay Area housing market, calling it bifurcated. We think it's three markets, one for people with lots of cash and the willingness to spend it on luxury properties, a second that's waiting for prices to come down, and a third that's priced out entirely. Some might say the last group's not really a quantifiable group; we think of them as the band previously known as sub-prime. There's still some of that old buyer-seller staredown going on, with buyers fearful of overpaying and sellers waiting to extract their price.
It also seems clear that fewer people are willing to overspend to be urban pioneers. The map above, from our pals at Redfin, shows the distribution of homes in all price ranges on the market over sixty days, with the heaviest concentration of homes in the southern neighborhoods: zips 94121, 94112 and 94134. It's possible that some of these are investor flips, but it may also be that the moment for quickly cashing out of Bayview or Hunters Point and moving to the 'burbs has passed.
· Would-Be Homebuyers Hesitate [SF Gate]
· Ups and Downs/Highs and Lows [Curbed SF, scroll down]
· San Francisco [Redfin]