Beautiful Mountain Blog of Belmont

Belmont Housing Market Report for November 2009

dmorgan@morganhomes.com (Drew & Christine Morgan) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:08:28 PST

Well it’s another one of those tricky months where the numbers tell an inaccurate story when it comes to the value of Belmont homes. (Click on the graphic fo a full size view) MEDIAN HOME PRICE Looking at the raw numbers, the median home value in Belmont dropped from $912,500 last November to $784,000 this year. That’s a whopping 14% decrease but wait—let’s look at what really happened. This November Belmont had three short sales which greatly impacted the results. More importantly was that the majority of the homes sold were much smaller than they were last year. Larger homes sell for less per square foot (since land is a constant). Therefore if many smaller homes sell in a given period the price per square foot statistic will rise while the median home price will fall. Watch for this inversely proportional relationship to guess when there might be more to the story than meets the eye. The median size Belmont home which sold in 2008 was 2095 Sq. Ft. and only 1568 in 2009. The difference of 342 square feet multiplied by the smaller price per square foot median of $488 last year means the adjusted median home value in Belmont this November would be $950,000, or an increase of 4%. NUMBER OF SALES The most impressive statistic is the number of sales which at 22 almost tripled from 2008. That speaks volumes as to consumer confidence in the local market. If sales were up because values were dramatically depressed,...

Time to Brine?

dmorgan@morganhomes.com (Drew & Christine Morgan) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:24:41 PST

Thanksgiving! What a great time to be appreciative of all that you have; your health, happiness, friends and family. Our Thanksgivings are typically not typical at all. The family descends upon our home with the enthusiasm eclipsed only by a FREE four star resort vacation, which is close to what they have come to expect. Somehow, we wouldn’t have it any other way. We both love to cook so cook we do. Drew owned his own food service company and is an accomplished cook in his own right, and in another lifetime I worked for Bill Graham Presents and helped run the catering operations to feed the bands. Needless to say our experience cooking for the masses comes in handy when the troops are home for the holidays. What’s on our menu? What’s not? We tend to view Thanksgiving as traditionalists and stick to dishes that conjure up fond memories of comfort foods prepared by our mothers with all of the love (if not creativity) imparted to the meal. But we also add one or two extra dishes that help keep the whole preparation less perfunctory and more fun. This year we’re doing Oysters Rockefeller but reverting to the original recipe from Antoine’s in New Orleans, rather than the typical oysters with spinach and hollandaise so prevalent at today’s seafood houses. We’ve actually made these once before—just not at Thanksgiving—and they are amazing! Here’s the recipe we used and the key ingredient is fresh Chervil & Taragon so forget going...

Belmont-July 2009 Home Sales (by request)

dmorgan@morganhomes.com (Drew & Christine Morgan) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:02:00 PST

We’re posting the sales for Belmont from back in July at the insistence of one of our readers (thanks for being so patient). We skipped that month since we were so busy ourselves. Quite a few buyers came out of the woodwork in July and we noticed it on one of our listings in San Carlos that had multiple offers. In our estimation, the Peninsula real estate market has not recovered significantly enough to warrant such activity but the low interest rates probably spurred people into action—all at once. At 24, July had the most sales and of any month this year. The median price was also the highest it has been all year at $926,500. But just look at how many homes sold over a million dollars! There were some very large homes selling which definitely propped up the median price temporarily. We’ll go out on a limb and say that will probably hold for the remainder of the year—and well into the next; mostly because of the seasonal nature of real estate. The prices that the sellers accepted were far under what their homes were listed for, indicating some tough negotiations by buyers and capitulating by sellers. Fifteen of the 24 homes sold under asking for on average of $ 43,000 less. Sales in July were still less than half of what they were just a few years ago when homes were flying off the shelves. Still, it’s nice to see a momentary blip—unless you are a buyer....