For the month of May 2021, the Santa Cruz County Real Estate Market Report shows that while the market remains strong, the stats leveled off a bit from the steeper increases of previous months. For single family homes we saw a small increase in median price from $1.27M in April to $1.30M in May. However, this is still a huge increase from $850K in May of 2020. The number of sales dropped slightly from 204 in April to 194 in May, but again, this was still a large jump from 92 sales for the same time in 2020. May still saw many multiple offer situations with buyers making overbids and an average sale price going 7% over list price.

Anecdotally, there has been some talk of a cooling market. Although most properties are selling quickly, not all do. If the list price is too high above other recent sales, sellers don't always get multiple offers and it can take longer to sell. This is especially true in the less desirable areas, especially if the property is in poor condition or doesn't "show well". Althoug it appears that it will continue to be a seller's market for the near future, there may be some opportunities for buyers who are willing to be patient and persistent.

With everything starting to open up after COVID-19 restrictions loosen up and many people starting to take summer vacations, we will be very interested to see how the statistics for June once they come out.