February 2019

We hope you enjoy our monthly newsletters. Each time, we strive to impart something of value, and quite transparently, it’s one avenue we have of keeping in touch with you.

When you think about it, we all have A dentist, A lawyer, A doctor, AN accountant. For possibly the largest transaction(s) of a person’s life, we want to be YOUR Realtors, but not just for when you buy and sell a home or investment property. We aim to be there whenever you have a question about the market or your property’s current value, or need insight on the latest law changes that affect home ownership. We hope you’ll call if you need a resource, like a referral to an electrician or plumber…any household-related service we can provide. We’ll even share the latest design trends and provide you with popular paint color choices.

Because we’re all busy, so often we allow time to fly by and there aren’t enough opportunities to personally connect. We hope to remedy that, this year. We often think back at those several months of almost daily interactions while working together. Then the deal is done, and *poof!*, it often feels like a breakup! We have to remember that it’s okay to take time to reach out to people we appreciate, whose company we’ve enjoyed, to catch up and just say, “We were thinking about you, and we hope you’re doing FANTASTIC”. Because we have, and we do.

All the very best to you and yours,

by Patrick Carlisle, Market Analyst for Compass Bay Area

As of early February, the government shutdown is over – at least for a little while – the stock market has recovered dramatically from its late 2018 plunge, and interest rates are well down from November highs. A good number of large, local, high-tech “unicorns” continue to plan IPOs in 2019. All these are positive economic indicators for the Bay Area real estate market – but indicators have proven to be quite volatile over the past 5 months and future movements are not to be taken for granted.

As detailed in our last report, there was considerable cooling in the market in the second half of 2018. The month of January typically has the fewest sales of the year, sales which mostly reflect activity during the December market doldrums: We don’t consider its data to be a reliable indicator of conditions or trends. But activity is picking up, and the beginning of the spring sales season – which in the Bay Area can start as early as February – will soon provide more direction as to where the market is heading.