One San Joaquin County community is now a housing battleground, data shows
MOUNTAIN HOUSE — An unincorporated San Joaquin County community near Tracy is the most competitive real estate market in the state, according to data from Redfin.
Mountain House is the first community when you come down the Altamont Pass into the valley, and it's now a housing battleground even as more and more houses come online in the area.
Rows of houses are being built and soon, they'll be sold within two weeks. That's what data from Redfin says about Mountain House.
Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, said that includes metrics like the sale-to-list ratio, how many homes go for above the asking price, and how long it takes to sell a home.
"There was a lack of existing homes for sale and builders already had a lot of projects in the pipeline that are coming online," he added.
Local real estate agent Inmar Barrera said it's all about location.
"Those customers, those purchasers are really looking to be as close as they possibly can to be able to commute to wherever they're coming from or wherever they're going to work," he said.
Barrera added that planned single-family homes are going up faster than apartments in Sacramento that have yet to be built.
"Renters are deciding on spending $3,500 a month on an apartment or whether they are going to look out this way," he said.
With interest rates falling, it may get more even competitive as affordability gets better.
"Now we're seeing some of that move further out toward the Manteca area, Ripon, Salida, that type of thing," Barrera said.
Now to some hard numbers. The average home sells for about 2% above the list price and accepts an offer in an average of nine days. Between 2022 and 2023, the percentage of homes that sold over the asking price leaped from 15.4% to 77.8%, hence the competitiveness.
