January 2022 Santa Barbara Real Estate Market

As we said in our last few market updates, Santa Barbara real estate inventory has slowed down significantly in the last few months of 2021. In December, it held to this trend. Only 56 single family homes went on the market, compared to 92 the month before and 100 the year before, in December 2020.

Months of Inventory in Santa Barbara Ca

To further illustrate exactly how low inventory is right now, Months of Inventory (Absorption Rate) dropped to 0.5! That means, given the current rate of how quickly homes are selling and how few homes are on the market, if nothing else came on the market, we would have zero homes on the market in 15 days.

We’ve said this before: this kind of market is certainly positive for homeowners. The median sales price in December was above $2,000,000 for the third time in the year of 2021. For the entire year of 2021, the median sales price was up 23% from 2020. That means that your home truly could be worth 23% more than it was last year. Even if you are not planning to sell, or if the timing isn’t right for your family to move, we encourage you to reach out for a free analysis on your home.

For buyers, this news is likely to be disappointing or frustrating as it means competition for homes is at an all time high. How are you supposed to find a home you like–or a home at all–if there are barely any on the market? And even if you find one, how are you going to compete with all the other buyers out there?

Well, we have good news for you! While the market has slowed down, Zia Group has doubled our efforts to find homes for our buyers. Each week, we contact thousands of homeowners in the Santa Barbara area on behalf of our buyers. We are finding homes for our buyers. And, when we’re at the negotiating table, we bring the experience of every single agent on our team–that’s 10 agents with well over 60 years of cumulative experience. It’s not a coincidence that our agents have been recently successful in negotiating below-asking purchase prices–even in the most competitive market we’ve ever seen.

If you want an agent like this working on your behalf, give us a call today!