All research that I get from Altos Research provides Quartile dicing and even this zip, 94401, is divided into Quartiles.  The Top Quartile, 1, has the most expensive houses and these are a mixed bag of houses.  Besides the 102 year old mansion, are two newly built houses on a shared lot, and a couple of older houses that have been improved dramatically for their neighborhoods and nothing sold in this Quartile last week.  Quartile 2 and Quartile 3 have houses about the same size, bedrooms, bathrooms and lot sizes but location affects price and saw only 1 sale in Quartile 2.  The final Quartile, 4, has the smallest and oldest houses in the 94401 zip and they had one sale last week.

Last year was the peak year for sales in 94401 and now the inventory has dropped to about 40 houses each week, a few more or less but the inventory has been declining all year.  That’s a good sign and means the neighborhoods are going to stabilize.

Along with the decline in inventory we’re seeing a rise in price due to the lack of bank owned sales here and hopefully, the market will remain improved.  If you were one of those people out there trying to time the market for bottom, it’s too bad because you can clearly see that happened around the turn of the year, when it is always the time of the year we see the lowest prices.

Now here’s the good news, 94401 is now a Cool Buyer’s market and that’s the first of the San Mateo zip codes to move up to that in almost 2 years.  Whoo Hoo!!  Altos Research tells me this zip code is now at sitting at 20 in the Market Action Index.  The red line, sitting squarely at 30, is the delineator between a Buyer’s or a Seller’s market.  Keep watching this zip code because it might be the weathervane indicating how the market is doing in San Mateo overall.

Tomorrow come back for 94402.