A Closer Look Into Buyers in Santa Barbara’s Real Estate Market

In the past month, the California Economic Forecast released its publication titled “Who’s Buying Homes in Santa Barbara County” which outlines their buyer survey analysis for the first half of 2018. After conducting research on 170 sales dated from January 2018 to June 2018, it was reported that 65% of buyers in the Santa Barbara market were locals while the remaining 35% were from out of the area.

Meet the Buyers:

In the first half of 2018, 64.6% of buyers were from South County Santa Barbara and none were from North County Santa Barbara. Another 13.6% were from California (outside of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties) while 10.7% were from the Los Angeles Area and the remaining 11.1% were from out of State.

Of all these buyers, 22% reported being first-time homebuyers while 13% reported buying investment homes and 12% were purchasing secondary homes. In the first half of 2018, 27% of buyers reported downsizing which is a typical rate on average since 2004, per the report. In addition, first-time homebuyers paid a median price of $930,000 while repeat buyers paid a median price of $1,449,500. A majority of buyers in the area, 67%, were employed in the area at the time of the survey.

Meet the Sellers:

Now looking at the other side, 57% of all sellers remained in the area, 16% remained in California but moved out of Santa Barbara County, and 17.3% moved out of State. Additionally, 2.3% moved to North County Santa Barbara, another 2.3% moved out of the country while the remaining 5.3% of sellers were deceased.

In summary, both buyers and sellers seem to originate from Santa Barbara County and the statistics from the first half of 2018 are very similar to the combined averages from 2004 to today.

A special thank you to The California Economic Forecast and Village Properties agents for sharing their sales and survey analysis. Village Properties is the only local firm contributing all of their sales to this analysis every year.

Please contact EK&A today if you have any questions or thoughts on the market; we would love to help you!