Palo Alto Housing Inventory Lower Than You Think It Is

It’s the end of February, the weather is a bit warmer and all is well in Palo Alto.  All except the housing inventory as the numbers remain unseasonably low.  Broker tour for the city of Palo Alto is on Friday, so that means most agents put their new listings on MLS by early Thursday so their new listing can make it on the Friday broker sheet.  As of today, there are 29 homes for sale in all of Palo Alto, and a total of 8 condo’s.  The average number of sales in a month for Palo Alto is somewhere in the 40’s, depending upon the month.  Knowing that 5 of the 29 have been on the market quite a while and probably not an easy sale, this means that all buyers are after about 24 homes.  But, the real number to look at is to take the inventory of 29 homes and separate them out by price range.  You have 8 homes in the 3 million plus range, 8 in the 2-3 million range, 10 in the 1-2 million dollar range and 3 under a million.

The price range is the true identified of what is out there as most buyers fit into only one of the price ranges.  For example, if you are looking for a home over three million, then you don’t really care to see the homes in the 1-2 range so your inventory is really only the 8 in your range.  So, housing inventory is a very personal number that is always a subset of the big number all the agents talk about.  For most buyers, there are really approximately 8 homes in the Palo Alto housing inventory that they really care about.  This shortage of housing inventory is why prices are going up as I know there are more than 8 buyers out there so it tends to create the situation where a buyer just wants to buy a house and they pick one of the 8 they see as the inventory doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

So, until more people decide to sell, this housing inventory number is much smaller than you think it is.