The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on the all-time lows that Santa Cruz County is facing for home sales this season. Yet on the same note, real estate agents are flooding the market trying to divide up pieces of a smaller pie. And even though home sales are at all-time lows, the value of properties in the area is skyrocketing!
"There’s a huge impact," said Dan Sedenquist, president of the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors... "We’re at our all-time high as far as membership now. It’s a smallish pie that’s being very finely divided. There are certainly more people chasing (sales) than I’ve ever seen."
"It’s extremely competitive," said JoAnn Gibson, a new agent who joined Keller Williams Realty, an Austin, Texas-based nationwide franchise that opened a Santa Cruz office in January. "There are far more agents in Santa Cruz County than there are homes that can be bought and sold. It doesn’t take much to do the math."
According to Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, housing sales are expected to drop this year about 2.5 percent from 2004 but the median price will rise 15 percent statewide.
It looks like agents have even dropped their usually fee from 6 percent down to as low as 4.5 percent. But that's not stopping Bailey Properties from setting a goal of hiring around 40 new agents for the launch of their new Scotts Valley office, as well as the launch of the 21-person Keller Williams office in Santa Cruz.
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
