Sister Kitchen Closed

Keith Byrd

Sister Kitchen, a Thai restaurant in Grover Beach, recently shut their doors. I love Thai food and my wife and I went there once, soon after they opened, but we never went back. I can’t remember the visit that well but those first impressions can be lasting. It’s always bad news to me when a business closes, especially one that isn’t a chain.

Downtown SLO Changes

Keith Byrd

I met my wife downtown tonite for dinner at Woodstock’s. Took a walk down Higuera to see if there were any changes to businesses.

The Thai restaurant next to Firestone is closed and a new Thai place is going in.

There is also a new juice bar going in by the stairs to Sephora.

That’s all I noticed on this walk.

Another item that I thought I’d mention is that the new hours for paid parking are now in effect. You now have to pay to park after 6 pm.

Changing Web Hosting Companies

Keith Byrd

8/26 update: The listing reports have been fixed!

You may have seen some weird stuff happening on my site the past day. I’m in the process of moving the site to another web hosting company. Looks like the new hosting server, which has the latest versions of the operating system, is not compatible with the MLS listing reports. I’m working on it but will probably need to hire a php programmer to update the MLS listing report code.

Months of Inventory

Keith Byrd

It’s been a crazy 2021 in real estate!! To see where we are I looked at “Months of Inventory”. This is an indicator of if no new listings happened, how long would it take for the inventory to be depleted. Months of Inventory is calculated by dividing the current month’s inventory by a rolling 12-month calculation of Pending Sales. A market is balanced when it’s between 4-6 months of inventory. When it’s lower than 4 months, it’s a sellers market and above 6 months, it’s a buyers market.

The graphs below are an indicator of why the market has been so crazy. These are for Single Family Homes and graphs Months of Inventory since 1/1/2020.

The first graph is for San Luis Obispo (blue), Paso Robles (red), and Arroyo Grande (green). The last datapoint is July 31, 2021.

The next graph is North Coast. Morro Bay (blue), Los Osos (red), and Cayucos (green)

The last graph is Pismo Beach (blue) and Avila Beach (red)

Could have Saved…

Keith Byrd

I calculated how much SLO County homeowners could have saved if Listing Brokerages charged a reasonable $9,900 flat fee for their listing service (sold homes Jan-Jun 9, 2021). (Single family homes sold over $500K, Total Solds = 1345). I assumed a 2.5% listing commission.

SLO County homeowners could have saved over $18 Million in commissions so far this year!!! ($18,093,957)

It’s no wonder why real estate brokerages want to keep the commissions based on a percentage of the sales price. In the majority of real estate transactions, the commission is split between multiple parties, most offering little to no assistance in selling the home. The commission pie must remain big if it’s being sliced up in so many pieces (listing agent, listing brokerage, franchise corporation, referral agent, lead generation company). Many listing agents (the ones doing the work to sell a home) end up with close the the same amount that we make with our $9,900 flat fee listing service.

We don’t split the commission you pay us with parties that aren’t directly working to sell your home! We also keep our overhead low and pass the savings along to you. This is how we can provide a full service at a fair price!! All real estate agents could offer a full service and price that we do if they wanted to save homeowners on commissions and put the most money in their pockets.