2016 is on track to exceed the number and volume of sales that we’ve seen in previous years. There have been 3,487 sales in the first 11 months of 2016, there were 3,743 total sales in 2015 and only 3,368 sales in 2014. Even if December 2016 has fewer sales than previous Decembers, we’ll exceed the number of sales in both previous years.
We talk a lot about the number of sales that occur, but how does that translate into dollars? In 2014, there was a total volume of $1.75 billion dollars in residential home sales here in SLO County. That number increased to just over $2 billion in 2015, and should reach $2.2 billion at the end of this year. The increase is due to both the increased number of sales and the increasing median home price. The residential median home price has increased 6.2% this year in SLO County, from $485,000 in 2015 to $515,000 in the first 11 months of 2016.
Back in October of 2015, the California Association of Realtors predicted a median home price increase of 3.2% statewide for 2016. The statewide increase for California ended up at right around 6.2%, exactly the same as what we saw here in San Luis Obispo. They have forecasted that next year the median home price increase will be slightly lower, closer to 4.3%.
Click Here to view the California Association of Realtor’s 2017 Housing Forecast