Just a brief note this month, since it is the holidays and you should all be with friends and family. Next month I will put out an in-depth recap of the whole year. No features or solds today – we’ll hold that for January.
This year was challenging for many in our business. I feel extremely thankful and fortunate that my team and I were able to rise to that challenge with the support of you all. We had a solid year, all things considered. The market made a couple of shifts- the national correction lag finally caught up with us and we saw some loss of value in the 5% – 15% range. The interesting thing was, not every property was affected. I was able to successfully communicate this fact to some; unsuccessfully to others, who didn’t believe it. The market confused a lot of people. Some product types actually increased in value over this time period. These were usually new construction, ground up rebuilds and products of rarity with regards to their location. Homes and land that were more common or unattractive moved downward closer to that -15% benchmark. The FED rate moved sharply North over the year, briefly pushing 30 year mortgages to around 8%; recently I am seeing them around 6.5% for a Jumbo, with the FED signaling 3 more .25 rate cuts in 2024. For the time being, it appears we avoided a crash, and home prices on the Monterey Peninsula have mostly settled and regained traction. The accepted outlook for many is that we may have a couple of years of a more balanced market, where prices don’t necessarily go up much. We still have lots of demand and prime homes and land are continuing to sell quickly and sometimes with multiple offers, albeit with a market volume that has been cut in almost half from it peak. Monterey County home prices are, overall, up 12.8% compared to last year. All good things.
We wish you much love and happiness during this time. See you in the New Year.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays,
– Ryan & Family
