Across the Bay Area, markets have continued to slow and cool.

There are clear signs of a cooling market as it undergoes corrections, but remember: A correction is not a crash.

As of late spring, across the Bay Area, less expensive home sales have been considerably impacted by rising interest rates – and this certainly occurred in San Francisco, particularly in the condo market.

Amid dramatic home-price gains to new peaks, we’re seeing preliminary signs of markets shifting cooler.

Soaring interest rates and housing costs belie continuing strong demand, low inventory of house listings, and high market velocity.

So far in 2022, Bay Area real estate markets appear largely unfazed by higher interest rates, volatility in financial markets, and troubling international events.

Inventory remains low, interest rates are creeping up. Still, in the Bay Area, real estate market indicators remain very strong.

2021 saw the highest 12-month sales volume in at least 16 years. Rents are down, and county population is down about 2%. Find out more about what’s happening in the market as we kick off the new year.

We’re headed into a typically slow end of year, even after what is surely one of the highest demand cycles in history.

Will inflation cause interest rates to creep up? That’s a typical pattern, but predicting changes in interest rates is a tricky game.

Somewhat surprisingly we are seeing a downtick in YOY inventory even as we entered the normally very hot fall sales season. After October, we typically see a drastic decline in new listings, but nothing about the market has been typical for some time now.

Compared to pre-pandemic levels, SFRs are up, condos are flat, and rents are still down. Read more in this month’s market report.

The first half of 2021 delivered big results, with plenty of new highs: Dollar-volume sales beat the previous high by nearly half, new listing and sales volume almost as high as 2015-2016, and much more.

Home prices in San Francisco presented as a mouse-over map and with charts by district.

Luxury house and condo sales skyrocket to new highs in spring 2021, and employment continues to rebound. San Francisco is roaring back from the pandemic lows.

Home sales volume reaches a new high, SFR prices spike, and the condo market continues to rebound.

What we can see from recent US census data is that the pandemic definitely did have an impact, with an increase in outbound migration from San Francisco and the Bay Area—but it is not a new phenomenon, merely amplified.

We are now beginning to see the arc of the impact the pandemic had on the real estate market in San Francisco. At least for now, we appear to be on the other side of it, and life in general seems to be returning to some semblance of how things were before—including the promise of the return of open houses.