September Local Real Estate Market Update

September 15, 2023

Welcome to football season, the first full month of school, and fingers crossed that the weather starts to chill out a bit. I hope September is off to a great start for all of you. Let's chat about how the real estate market is looking in SLO County.

I am personally seeing more buyers come back into the market after taking the last year or so off. Why is that? Well, it's definitely not because rates have gone down much. I just think many are starting to accept this 6 to 7% interest rate range that we've been in for a while as the new normal, at least for now, and that if you can make the numbers work and find the right property for you, it's more beneficial to get your foot in the door before prices increase further. Remember, we're not expecting major fluctuations either way with rates in the coming months. But when they do eventually drop back down closer to 5% or below, the market is going to go nuts again and buyers will be back to thinking it out with other buyers, with bidding wars and higher prices.

As far as numbers go, the average sales price in the county with $810,000 for August and $492 per square foot on average, all went under contract in about 13 days on market and there were 229 total sales.

Just for fun. The highest sales price in the county for the month of August was this gorgeous oceanfront property in Cayucos which closed out a cool $6 million. The lowest sales price, oddly, was in Pismo Beach, a small two bedroom unit, which closed just over $179,000.

Stay tuned for more market updates coming your way, including the national market update coming up next.