STATS
These are statistics about housing inventory in San Francisco. All are pretty self explanatory except months of inventory which is an exceptionally useful piece of information.
Think of months of inventory like this: suppose you are a grocer and you have 10 bags of flour on the shelf. You sell 2 bags a month. The ten bags represent about 5 months of inventory. The months of inventory figure does not tell you how long it will take to sell the first bag, nor how many bags sell in any one month, but rather it does say when you will likely be out and have to reorder. We use that same principle in real estate. In other words, given the homes we have on the market today, and assuming no new homes come on the market, we answer this question: How long until we are completely out of houses? This number is important not because it tells us how long any listing we may have will sell - it does not tell us that - but it does show us a snapshot of how much inventory vs how many buyers are out there. And why do we care...
When months of inventory climbs above six, there can begin a push down on prices. Inventory amounts of less than 5 months tend to push prices up. But what we really look at is....
Months of inventory AND days on market. Days on market is a leading indicator - if it is climbing, so likely will inventory. There are exceptions to this. During Covid, inventory and days on market both went up and had little effect on prices. That was a mechanical problem - because there were no open houses and every home had to be shown privately by appointment, the entire process slowed down.
These stats are live - they are updated every month on the 1st. They are presented as a 3 month rolling average. The stats cover the entirety of San Francisco county - all property types, sizes, bedroom counts, etc. are included. For those that live outside of San Francisco, email us and we'll get you those stat as well. Rest assured, what happens in SF will happen in the outer counties too, albeit a little later.
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