Wait And See Market?

Marin County Real Estate Market Team O'Brien Real Estate April 11, 2025

To over-simplify things, right now there are three buyer profiles:

1. The buyer who has been compelled to stop the buying process as they have lost too much wealth in the markets, margin calls, fear of losing a job, reduction in business, general fear, etc.

2. The buyer who sees this as an opportunity to buy now before prices (and rates?) rise again knowing inflation remains sticky and may head higher, maybe a buyer more comfortable placing their capital in a hard 'safe haven' asset like real estate, or someone fearing rents may continue their rise, seeing ownership as the smarter option.

3. The buyer who simply wants to press the pause button to see how all of this market turbulence plays out, maybe someone unwilling to liquidate stocks that have dropped dramatically in value t buy, hoping they will bounce back. (If you owned $250k of APPLE stock 3 months ago, that is worth $180k today) Some may want to place their capital into the markets as they see buying opportunities and upside in areas.

We currently have some buyers who are in a wait-and-see stance. We have experienced several buyers pressing the pause button to see if the turbulence snowballs, tapers or recovers. We have also had four separate buyers purchase very recently. They were in three different price ranges; one in the 5 million range, two in the 1.2 million to 1.6 million range, and the last one in the $600K range. In three cases they secured their property under the list price, which is far from a common occurrence in Marin. A good time to buy? We have also secured two full price offers and one over asking offer for three of our listings recently. A good time to sell? The negotiations were the key in all seven sales and of course the overall desirability of property.

In my rounds of the broker tours these last two days the consensus is that the market is steady, but buyers are cautious. The higher-end homes being the exception, this market is experiencing more competition with multiple offers being common and homes selling over the list price.

Also there appears to be more out of area buyers then is typical. We need for more time to lapse to see if this is a trend or not.