Jenny C and her family are not giving up…yet…

Maybe you’ve reached that point (as many of us have in San Francisco) where that fun downtown pad you bought within walking distance of the best breakfast in the city is starting to pile up with toys in the living room.  And maybe the reality of paying fat property taxes and still having to plan to send your kid(s) to private schools has sunk in.  You’ve started thinking about that escape to the burbs.  The land of great public schools, large yards and “great rooms”.  And guess what - with the world of Real Estate crashing around us, turns out that San Francisco home values seem to have held up better than the rest of the country.  Maybe you can even get more bang for that buck?!

If so, you’re like my wife and I…and you’re also like Jenny C.

Jenny’s story provides a good glimpse into what it’s like to actually be in the market to buy and sell today.   And it’s a reminder about what makes Real Estate such an interesting business.  Every single story is personal, different and rife with its own nuances.  No two stories are alike.

Jenny and her husband are both working professionals in San Francisco.  They have a 2 year old daughter and own a top floor “Tenants In Common” (TIC) unit in an upscale neighborhood in San Francisco (and what neighborhood in San Francisco isn’t upscale these days?).   They had been “passively looking” for a new place for the past year and recently, started visiting open houses around the Bay Area every other weekend or so.  And finally, after seeing a couple of homes and falling in love with them, they realized that it did feel like the right time to make a move.  Within two weeks, they went from “thinking about it” to storing most of their belongings and living in a staged home listed on the MLS.

And guess what, for all the talk about the mortgage crisis, getting financing was the easiest part.  Maybe it’s because they can both provide plenty of income verification, or they plan to make a healthy down payment, just like the old days - but the loan is not the issue.

Jenny & Company currently have an offer on a home they love in Marin County that has been accepted, but is contingent on the sale of their SF home.  And as they say, there’s the rub.  A unit that would have moved in under two weeks a couple of years ago, is now still on the market after having been listed on the MLS for more than 60 days.

You could blame it on a lot of things.  It’s the slow season, in the slowest year we’ve ever seen. The economy is scary and confusing.  It’s a TIC which requires a little more buyer knowledge than the average property does.  Their REALTOR® has been a challenge in terms of offering suggestions and solutions other than lowering the price. And, the marketing has been minimal. In fact, Jenny and her husband have done much of it themselves, from building a website to holding an open house to posting flyers. Perhaps it’s all of the above.

Here is how Jenny summed it all up for me:

1. Number of days our house has been on the market: 64
2. Number of houses we have made offers on: 5
3. Number of offers accepted: 2 (in escrow on one home and cancelled the other)
4. Number of times our offers were completely ignored: 2
5. Number of homes we made offers on that have since sold: 0
6. Average percentage under asking price of our offers: 15%

Never-the-less, this is a prime example of the difference between San Francisco Real Estate four years ago and reality of the market today.   And more importantly, it’s a reminder that every individual experience is a different story.  Real Estate is not about appreciation rates, mortgage points and MLS listings.  It’s about real families trying to move into a new home in a great place to raise their kids and live their lives.

Jenny & Company are not giving up though.  In her words “the house has been staged, we’ve sunk so much time into this and we’ve been living in the ‘hotel’ so long now that we’re going to see it through.  It only takes one good offer.”

Or in the words of her Realtor, “Every home sells…for a price….”

Look for Part II of our Real World Real Estate Tales coming soon!

Alex Chang
CEO - Roost.com
alex.chang@roost.com
Twitter - @AlexChangSF