How come there aren't many homes on the market in Berkeley right now?

Carol recently wrote:

We’ve been in business since the 80s and at this time of year, it’s always pretty much the same….. slow with short brokers’ tours for us on Thursdays because there isn’t much that’s new on the market for us to see and report on. It’s frustrating for us too, because our buyers sometimes disappear when the house they want just doesn’t show up….or if it suddenly does, they choose not to act, or just act too late.

Lack of inventory in the winter for whatever reason, wet rainy weather, seller perception that “spring is the best time to sell”, means pent-up buyer demand. So when nice homes do come on the market they get snapped up, much like they were during our hot market period and buyers still wind up competing with each other. We live in a highly desirable area and people move around, so there is turnover, just not as much as we all would like right now! I spoke with a Marin County agent yesterday and she said the same thing about her market.

If April and May come along and inventory remains low, then that fact will be a genuine blip on the historical market chart....but I doubt that will happen; we always see a large number of homes come on around then.

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Ira Again:

If you're thinking of selling.. this is a great time. We're seeing a high Buyers to Listings ratio, so your home will stand out!

Carol referred to us reporting on homes on the market.

We preview 15-20 homes each week on the Berkeley Thursday tour, send our clients extraordinarily detailed notes, comments, maps, photos… and assign each home an exclusive LTC rating between 1 and 4.

Unless the house is really bad.

Then it gets the dread “Hair Ball” rating

You see, LTC stands for Lucy The Cat, and though she’s no longer with us, she lives on with her LTC rating of 1 to 4 paws. The hairball rating speaks for itself.

Ira.. now owned by Poudini (the escape artist) and her mean sister, The Baby Terrorist