The number of homes for sale in the California market, which has seen listed prices being slashed by sellers, has grown in the past few weeks, according to the listings available on Zillow, as the spring homebuying season begins.
As of Friday morning, 76,577 homes were listed for sale on Zillow by agents in California and 3,843 by owners and others. These included all types of homes—apartments, condos, single- and multi-family homes, townhomes, and lots. Of these, 10,873 were listed by agents, and 308 were listed by owners. Others had a price reduction.
Most of these homes with slashed list prices were located around San Francisco and Los Angeles, some of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country.
On March 4, Newsweek reported that there were a total of 73,506 properties listed by agents and 3,997 listed by owners and others in the Golden State. Some 9,545 properties listed by agents had a price reduction; among those sold by owners and others, the number was only 310.
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Vacation rental investor Rohin Dhar noticed the drop in prices in condos for sale in San Francisco, writing on X, formerly Twitter on Thursday about a downtown property that is now listed for less ($930,000) than it was bought for in January 2024 ($950,000). According to public records, it was sold for $1,000,000 in June 2013.
It’s not surprising that the property mentioned by Dhar has seen such a dramatic price drop, as downtown San Francisco has faced a series of challenges in the past few years linked to the pandemic, remote work, and a rise in retail theft which has led to the exodus of many companies.
At the state-level, 1,346 condos put on the market by agents and 5 listed by owners or others had a price reduction, according to Zillow, out of a total of 6,836 listed by agents and 170 listed by owners.
Despite these price cuts, home prices in California are actually on the rise year over year. As of February 29, the average California home value was $765,197, up by 5.4 percent from a year before and down from $765,352 in January 2024.
After reaching a peak of 769,345 in July 2022, home prices in California dipped during the so-called correction of the U.S. housing market between late summer 2022 and spring 2023, as demand dropped amidst the sudden surge in mortgage rates driven by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign to combat the rise of inflation.
But after reaching a low of $720,203, home prices started to climb back, mainly due to a nationwide historic shortage of homes, which in California has yet to be addressed.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.