Pending home sales fall across Bay Area

Listings are down compared with 2016 because fewer homes are available to sell

Amid the continuing housing crunch, pending home sales dropped across the Bay Area last month.

A California Association of Realtors report shows pending sales fell 0.6 percent throughout the region in June, compared with the same month a year earlier. Pending sales fell 10.4 percent in San Mateo County and 0.4 percent in Santa Clara County.

“Last week in Santa Clara County, we stood at roughly 35 percent fewer listings than we did last year at the same time,” said Chris Trapani, founder and CEO of the Sereno Group. “You look at that and say, `What is there even to sell?’ The fact that Santa Clara is off only one percent or less in units sold — that’s actually kind of remarkable, I think.”

Craig Gorman, past president of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, agreed: “The biggest reason why sales are down is because there’s just not enough inventory.”

For the week of July 10, he said, only 1,091 homes were on the market in the county.

“They’re still popping off the shelves if they’re priced right,” Gorman said.

San Francisco County came back from a double-digit decline in pending sales in May, and rose 22.2 percent in June.

To the north of the Bay Area, pending sales were down 6.5 percent in Sacramento.

To the south, they fell 15.7 percent in Santa Cruz.

Statewide, pending home sales slipped for the sixth month in a row, down 0.9 percent.

Region by region, however, the picture was more varied. Southern California sales were up 2.5 percent, and Central Valley sales rose 5.2 percent.