The City of Monte Sereno is a popular community bordering Los Gatos, Saratoga, and the Santa Cruz mountains. It’s also quite small, with just about 3,500 residents, so tracking the real estate market trends for the area can be tricky.
The number of houses sold in any given month will always be extremely small and the data will jump around. Checking the Los Gatos market will also help, but the best pulse on the market will come from particular sales in particular neighborhoods.
Houses make up most of Monte Sereno – there are no commercial buildings, just a post office, city hall, and an elementary school. There are also extremely few residential properties that are not detached single family homes. We don’t track the condo or townhomes in this area as we do in other communities because there just wouldn’t be enough (if any) data for it!
First up for the market analysis is the Altos Research weekly profile for Monte Sereno (uses list prices, not sales). This is updated automatically, so feel free to check this article weekly to see what’s happening now with list prices.
Trends at a Glance from the RE Report:
By the end of August this small city had only 5 closed sales and 4 active listings – so take any swings in data with a grain of salt. Despite those swings, Monte Sereno appears to be showing a fair amount of stability. Inventory and turnover have calmed a hair month-over-month with active inventory way down year-over-year.
Over the last couple of months the market has calmed down. Prices fell significantly since last year, a big change from the month prior when prices were up 10% year-over-year, and that was closer to 20% or even 30% in spring. Still, with so few sales the data is likely to have been sqewed some by a few extraordinary sales.
The sales to list price ratio tends to swing wildly with so few sales, but has remained over 100% on average for months. While the average days on market were stable month-over-month, the individual sales tell a different story – only one sold in under a week, compared to July where that was a small majority of sales.
With high demand and extremely low inventory, Monte Sereno remains in a strong seller’s market with clear cooling.
| Trends At a Glance | Aug 2022 | Previous Month | Year-over-Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median Price | $3,075,000 (-30.1%) | $4,400,000 | $4,990,000 (-38.4%) |
| Average Price | $3,334,000 (-22.5%) | $4,304,190 | $5,255,830 (-36.6%) |
| No. of Sales | 5 (0.0%) | 5 | 6 (-16.7%) |
| Pending | 7 (-22.2%) | 9 | 5 (+40.0%) |
| Active | 4 (-20.0%) | 5 | 12 (-66.7%) |
| Sale vs. List Price | 100.4% (-7.0%) | 108.0% | 100.7% (-0.4%) |
| Days on Market | 23 (0.0%) | 23 | 61 (-63.0%) |
| Days of Inventory | 24 (-20.0%) | 30 | 60 (-60.0%) |
