Walnut Creek Real Estate Absorption Rates
Real Estate absorption rates are an indication of how long it would take, at the previous month’s pace, for a market to sell off its entire inventory. This value helps us gain a better understanding of the market in which we are dealing:
- Are we in a buyers or sellers market?
- How are 3 bedroom homes selling in the Palos Verdes neighborhood versus the Saranap neighborhood?
- What impact will we have if we price a home at $605k versus $599?
- If I want the best chance at negotiating a below asking price offer, should I look in Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill?
- etc.
Absorption rates can, and should, be calculated in a number of ways depending on your interest. At a very high level, you can look at the national, state and county numbers; however, these won’t help you buy or sell a specific property. When you are dealing at the property level, it is important to look at these numbers across price boundaries, property characteristics and local areas. In the table below, I give you the absorption rates for Walnut Creek across some high level price boundaries. Since December is historically a very slow month, I provide the rate based off of the December sold numbers as well as the 2007 average sold numbers.
| Under $500k | $500k - $999k | $1M - $1.499k | $1.5M - $1.999M | Above $2M | |
| December | 37 Weeks | 28.6 Weeks | 39 Weeks | 43.3 Weeks | 8.6 Weeks |
| 2007 Avg | 24.8 Weeks | 20.1 Weeks | 20.3 Weeks | 26 Weeks | 16 Weeks |
If you are buying or selling property, you owe it to yourself to know the absorption rates at a granular level. If you don’t have access to the necessary data to calculate this number yourself, feel free to give me a call and I’d be happy run the calculations.
Tags: absorption rate, Investing, Real Estate, Walnut Creek
