I was gearing up to update the sales statistics on our web site this morning when I got sidetracked. Fresh stats are still on the agenda, but first I wanted to attempt to graphically illustrate the broken record Steve and I have been playing lately for our clients and anyone else who will listen.
Namely, patience is a virtue at the higher price points, because the real show right now is happening in the below-$600,000 range.
This is a chart showing numbers of Scripps Ranch sales compared to numbers of listings by price point. It’s the old engineer in me; I was looking for that normal curve. While listing pricing generally follows the bell-shaped distribution we would expect, the sale prices chart bucks tradition.
In short: Listings are all over the board, but the guys with the checkbooks continue to congregate at or near the entry level. Think of it another way. You have a big, beautiful home with many fine rooms. Yet, whenever you entertain, everyone ends up in the kitchen. Anything below $600,000 in Scripps Ranch today is the kitchen.
(Data is from the Sandicor Multiple Listing Service and is for detached homes listed as of 3/4/09 and sold between 1/1/09 and 3/4/09.)
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t buyers out there for your $900,000 (or more) home. It just reminds us that there are fewer of them. When you see that a grand total of 26 detached homes have sold in Scripps Ranch since the beginning of the year and, of those, only two sold above $900,000, maintaining realistic expectations when selling a higher priced home will help to preserve your sanity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kris Berg is Co-Owner and Designated Broker of San Diego Castles Realty. If not-so static web sites are your thing, go here at once where you will find loads of real estate information including homes for sale, market trends, floor plans and more. Kris's hobbies include fencing and spot welding. She likes kittens. 
on 
on 
on 
on 
on 
on 
on 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Cool chart. You could use this kind of data to determine how long to hold out before cutting your price. Jim “The Realtor” says to cut your price by $15k every week until it sells, but that may be excessive if there are only a handful of buyers out there in your market segment. You have to let people see it before you start slicing the pricing. Maybe a better metric would be cut your price after a certain number of prospective visits.
Very cool graph.
@Jacob- That would be like a crazy game Russian roulette. Buyers would be sitting there sweating, dying to pull the trigger, but wanting to wait as long as possible, trying to get the best possible price. It could be on internet, it would be awesome.