San Mateo County sees median home price reach $1.7M despite pandemic

The Bay Area’s growth mirrors prices spiking across the country, according to the report showing that the national home price grew by 9.2% since 2019, while prices in California jumped by 7% in the last 12 months.

CoreLogic CEO and President Frank Martell said the growth is opposite of market expectations from when the pandemic first began to spread and shockwaves were felt through the market, yielding concerns that havoc could be looming.

“At the start of the pandemic, many braced for a Great Recession-era collapse of the housing market,” said Martell in a press release. “However, market conditions leading into the crisis — namely low home supply, desire for more space and millennial demand — amplified the rapid acceleration of home prices.”

The national growth shows the most significant price increases since 2014, according to the report.

The median sales price in San Mateo County jumped since December 2019, according to reports from the San Mateo County Association of Realtors, which showed a leap from $1.475 million to $1.7 million at the end of 2020.

Real estate company Compass characterized the chaotic nature of the local real estate market in its annual review.

“Pandemic, shelter in place, mass unemployment, terrible financial hardship for many residents and small businesses, new ways of working, office buildings empty, people move, dreadful fires, an anxious presidential election, interest rates to historic lows, stock market to new highs, IPO mania breaks out again, vaccines begin to arrive — and the Bay Area real estate market went into hyper drive, with median home prices hitting new peaks” according to the report.

Illustrating its perspective, a Compass table showed the county’s median sales price regularly ticking up each year from $1.2 million in 2016 to $1.5 million in 2018 to the new record of $1.7 million in 2020.

The growth throughout 2020 has not been so linear, noted the CoreLogic report, which showed there was a temporary glitch in the market around April when the pandemic first started causing concerns regarding the health of the economy.

But those fears quickly subsided and price increases were driven largely by favorable mortgage rates and a squeeze on inventory as many homeowners elected to keep their house off the market for most of last year, said the report.

“Two record lows are fueling home price gains: for-sale inventory and mortgage rates,” said CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft in a prepared statement. “Prospective sellers with flexible timetables have opted to delay listing their home until the pandemic fades or they are vaccinated.”

That shortage is not as apparent in San Mateo County, according to the SAMCAR report that showed inventory, new listing and total transactions were up in December 2020 from the same time in the year prior. Considering seasonal adjustments, those numbers are still down from July when the sales market is traditionally more active, according to the SAMCAR report.

But even comparing the hotter summer sales season, 2020 featured more listings, deals and inventory than the year prior, according to SAMCAR.

And while the market has been humming in recent months, questions linger over how much longer these trends can continue, according to the CoreLogic report.

“We can expect more inventory to come available in the second half of the year, leading to slowing in price growth toward year-end,” said Martell.

austin@smdailyjournal.com