The first set of charts below track Weekly Market Activity in San Francisco through January 23, 2011. Unless specified otherwise, this includes activity in houses, condos, TICs and 2-4 unit buildings.

Number of Listings Accepting Offers (by week for past 6 months): offer acceptance activity continues to increase as the market wakes up from the holidays.

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New Listings coming on Market (by week for past 6 months): there has certainly been a bounce since the New Year, but no big September-like deluge of new listings coming on market (yet).

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Listings Actively for Sale (by week for past 6 months): climbing very slowly — the increased number of listings accepting offers and the moderate rate of new listings coming on market mean no large increase in inventory.

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Units Sold vs. Units Expired or Withdrawn (by week for past 6 months): the low number of closed sales in January reflects the slowdown in accepted offer activity after Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. Even with relatively strong activity on the buy-side (for the time of year), more listings have expired/withdrawn than have sold since mid-November. Buyers are cherry-picking what they perceive as the good values.

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Percent of SF HOUSE Listings Accepting Offers (by week for past 6 months): the week through 1/23/11 saw the highest percentage (8.4%) of house listings accepting offers in the last six months (and indeed much longer). Limited inventory + strong buyer demand for houses = very high percentage of house listings going under contract. Not a bad time to bring a listing on market.

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Percent of SF CONDO Listings Accepting Offers (by week for past 6 months): not as dramatic as the house statistics, but once again the highest percentage (5.9%) in well over 6 months.

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Median Price by MONTH for the past 2 YEARS for SF Houses, Condos & TICs: every month the media barrages us with headlines that the market is DOWN 2.5% from the previous month or the previous year, or UP 1.2% and so on. Monthly variations in median price are VIRTUALLY MEANINGLESS. As we can see here the median has been jogging up and down almost every month around a relatively steady median price of about $700,000. Until one sees a steady, consistent rise or fall over many months, the indication is that the market is basically remaining stable.

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Median Price by QUARTER for the past 3 YEARS for SF Houses, Condos & TICs: looking at the median sales price by quarter, the basic stability becomes much clearer. (The longer the time period and the greater the quantity of sales, the more meaningful the statistical analysis.) After the decline subsequent to the financial markets meltdown in autumn 2008, for the past 7 quarters (21 months), today’s median – though jogging up and down a little each quarter — is virtually unchanged from the median of Spring 2009.

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