Vallejo & Fairfield Housing Markets Among the ‘Hottest’ in 2021

According to a recent report, the housing markets of Vallejo and Fairfield are among the hottest in the country for 2021. This is based on an analysis conducted by the research team at Realtor.com, and published earlier this month.

Based on the company’s findings, the Vallejo-Fairfield metro area real estate market is currently the fourth-hottest housing market in the country. As of February 2021, anyway. It was surpassed only by Burlington, N.C.; Rapid City, S.D.; and Stockton-Lodi, Calif. on the Realtor.com “hotness” scale.

But what does this mean exactly? What is a hot housing market and how does it affect home buyers and sellers in the area?

The short answer: There are currently more buyers than properties within the Vallejo-Fairfield metro area. As a result, the local real estate market remains highly competitive. There are plenty of people in the market looking for a home to purchase, but not nearly enough properties to go around. This lopsided supply and demand situation increases competition among buyers and puts upward pressure on home prices.

Vallejo and Fairfield Among Hottest Housing Markets

On February 25, 2021, the housing market research team from Realtor.com published an update to its “hottest markets” list. Each month, their analysts review real estate conditions in metro areas all across the country. Specifically, they look at how quickly homes are selling in a particular area, the number of viewers per property, and other supply and demand factors.

In their February 2021 hottest housing markets list, the Vallejo-Fairfield metro area came in at number four.

Here’s what the authors of the report had to say:

Spillover markets like Sacramento and Vallejo-Fairfield — which have drawn buyers away from San Francisco and Santa Clara — continue to dominate the list. But this month, we saw that trend amplify further, as the larger, more dense markets continued to drop in the rankings.

Of course, this probably comes as no surprise to anyone who has attempted to buy a home in Vallejo or Fairfield. The entire Solano County real estate market is highly competitive right now, with buyers attempting to outmaneuver each other for a limited number of properties. Homes tend to sell very quickly under such conditions, and often for an amount that’s above the original listing price.

Local real estate agents in the Vallejo-Fairfield area have reported homes receiving multiple offers within a day or two of going on the market. That’s a common condition in many Bay Area cities. So it’s no surprise to see this area appear on a hottest housing markets list for 2021.

A Bold Home-Price Forecast for 2021

The Realtor.com research team is not the only group issuing a strong housing market forecast for Vallejo and Fairfield, California. Analysts from the real estate data company Zillow recently issued a strong forecast for these two markets as well.

In February, Zillow reported that the median home value for the Vallejo-Fairfield metro area housing market had increased by 9% over the past year. They also issued a strong forecast for the next 12 months. Looking forward, they predicted the median home value would rise by nearly 10% over the next year or so (into February 2022).

So here we have two separate reports and indicators of how hot the Vallejo and Fairfield real estate markets are in 2021. This metro area has appeared on Realtor.com’s ranking of the hottest markets in the nation, and has also received a strong forecast from the research team at Zillow.

High Competition Leading to Big Offers

A separate report published recently showed that home buyers within the Vallejo and Fairfield housing markets are making some pretty big offers. This is a direct result of the tight inventory conditions mentioned earlier. With multiple offers being made, buyers often have to outbid one another by going above the original list price.

In January 2021, more than half of all purchase offers within the Vallejo-Fairfield real estate market were above the original list price. In other words, buyers are frequently making offers that exceed the seller’s asking price.

This kind of thing happens in a highly competitive housing market with strong demand and limited inventory. And that’s exactly what we are seeing in Vallejo and Fairfield, Solano County’s two largest cities.

A Fast-Moving Real Estate Market

As you would imagine, homes are also selling quickly in these real estate markets — much faster than the national average. According to the Realtor.com report mentioned earlier, homes listed for sale in the Vallejo-Fairfield metropolitan area spent a median of 27 days on the market before going under contract. That was well below the national average, and below a lot of other California cities as well.

More importantly, the “median days on market” declined by -49% over the previous 12 months. That means homes are selling even faster today (as of early 2021) than they were a year ago. Not surprising, when you consider the ongoing supply and demand imbalance within the Vallejo and Fairfield real estate markets.

These reports and forecasts send a clear signal to home buyers. If you’re planning to buy a home in Vallejo or Fairfield, California in 2021, you should be prepared for stiff competition. This is true for all of Solano County, as well as the rest of the San Francisco Bay area. It is an active and highly competitive real estate market, where buyers have to move quickly.