Let’s preface this article by saying that prices in Tiburon and Marin as a whole have had a wonderful rise for the past few decades. The median price of a home in Tiburon in 1994 was $597,500 and today it is $1,673,000. It is said that history repeats itself, but in the case of the Marin and Tiburon housing market no one can be confident that we will continue to see the type of appreciation we have seen in the past.

Home price appreciation in Marin and the entire San Francisco Bay area came to a halt in 2005/2006, and residential prices have dropped each year forward. If you take a look at Tiburon as a whole (and I am only going to talk about the single family home market), average prices peaked in 2007 at $2,561,000. The average sale price of a home in Tiburon fell to $2,095,000, an 18.1% decline.

In Marin, sales of homes under $1 million represented 55% of the market from 2005-2009. If you look at the higher end ($2 million and more) then we have a very different story. Homes sold over $2 million from 2005-2009 represented only 11% of the market. The highest percent during the last 5 years was 13% of the total market and the lowest was 7.3% of the market through 8/31/09.

The stresses in these price points are stronger than in the lower price ranges. When a seller loses a house through foreclosure at the low end, or needs to leave equity on the table because they must sell, there are many more buyers around to bid on that house and to make the sale. When a seller in the over $2 million range needs to sell, or for that matter wants to sell, we are seeing less demand and therefore greater price pressures on those home.

Below are some of the general statistics for reference:

ALL TIBURON – SINGLE FAMILY HOMES

The current drop in demand is due to general economic weaknesses:

• Job uncertainty
• Unemployment
• Under employment
• Decreased wealth caused by the decrease in values of investments
• One of the biggest factors is real estate lenders taking the most conservative stand after years of being very liberal in their lending

All of these elements have caused a perfect storm for the real estate market, negatively impacting money demand for ownership.

Also, one of the unspoken reasons for a drop in demand, and a potential continuation of the stresses on the housing market, have to do with consumers’ opinion on where prices are going. No one wants to buy in a strongly uncertain market, especially if they feel price will move down again. At the lower end of the market the demand for these homes is exceeding the supply, therefore keeping the homes moving out of inventory. At the upper end of the price pyramid the demand has been decreasing since 2005 and continues presently.

94920 ZIP CODE


the number of listings in Tiburon (excluding Belvedere) stands at 109. There are 83 single family homes market for sale on the Multiple Listing Service. You need to look at these in the context of the total number of homes sold annually in Tiburon as follows:

2009: 44 (through 8-31)


2008: 80


2007: 120


2006: 108


2005: 128

At current annualized sales of 66 units for 2009, the current inventory of 83 homes will take more than one year to sell. There is anticipation that more properties will be hitting the market in the next few weeks, pushing up the listings competing for buyers.

The breakdown by price of these homes is also interesting to follow:

Less than $1 million: 5


$1 million to $2 million: 23


$2 million to $3 million: 20


$3 million to $4 million: 14


Over $4 million: 21


TOTAL Single Family: 83

There are 86 homes currently on the market in Tiburon with 15 listings under $1 million. In the price range of $1.5-3 million there are 35 actively being marketed. Sales numbers for the past 5 years are below:

2009: 19 (through 8-31)


2008: 43


2007: 61


2006: 59


2005: 69

I am not in the business to make predictions on the prices of the housing stock in Marin. I think we will encounter some obstacles to a robust recovery of housing prices as the ability to buy larger and more expensive homes is directly correlated with a combination of increasing income levels, increasing asset wealth and the employment market.

If some of these indicators turn positive for an extended amount of time, we can see buyers coming back into the market and therefore demand will hopefully push prices up. I do not see another housing boom as the one we had over the past 5-10 years. In addition, any additional distressed properties that hit the market will have an impact on the general housing prices.