Today is Thursday. Each Thursday, fellow agents and I shuffle into our cars and drive around Berkeley, Kensington, Albany, El Cerrito, Emeryville and Oakland to check out all of the new listings. Today we saw 9 houses. That is down by 50%. To entice agents to view a house, most will provide food and tasty treats; one house offered a new Prius to the agent who brought an offer.

Are people afraid to sell? I can’t really tell you how many people are out there who may be afraid to sell, but what I can tell you is that the numbers are down.I did a little research and found that in these surrounding East Bay areas that there are currently 1916 active listings (1678 of which are in Oakland alone).

Since the beginning of the year some interesting things have happened:

Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Kensington and Emeryville:

Year-to-DateActive: 252
Expired: 294
Price Change: 23
Pending: 108
Sold: 812
Withdrawn: 242

Now let’s add in Oakland:

Year-to-DateActive: 1664
Expired: 2281
Price Change: 107
Sold: 2139
Withdrawn: 1925

It is safe to say that nearly 40% of our listings were expired or cancelled and only 28% have sold. So of course sellers are nervous; only those who really need to sell are looking to put their house on the market.Sure, we still have multiple offers: in fact, one house in the Claremont Hills just had 20 offers. Sellers, don’t be afraid! That is at least 19 other buyers immediately available in the Claremont Hills.

(data courtesy of EBRDI MLS)