Maintaining nearly $100M in sales in 2022, despite dramatic slowdowns in California’s residential real estate market, Julie Wyss again earns a top spot among The Bay Area’s Leading 100 list of real estate agents.
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August 2023 – Higher interest rates, historically low inventory, and mass layoffs across Silicon Valley’s post-COVID tech sector haven’t forced Julie Wyss to forfeit her position among the top echelons of Bay Area real estate royalty. If anything, the real estate market’s recent challenges have made her more dedicated than ever to being the kind of agent who recognizes and adjusts to subtle market shifts that would otherwise make or break a real estate transaction. Earning a place at #47 for 2023, The Leading 100 List represents Northern California’s 100 top-producing real estate agents across all nine Bay Area counties based on dollar sales volume.
In a stratospheric real estate market that has refused to return to “normal” for decades, Julie Wyss recognizes the hardships her clients are facing. Even homeowners with decades of equity are struggling to buy up from their current homes. “Today’s mortgage rates have rendered normally reasonable buy-up homes unreachable when you factor in the additional 4% or more in interest on top of historically high home prices. In a low-interest setting, some homes are natural stepping stones buyers can use to get into prized ‘forever homes,’ but in today’s market, moving up is simply not achievable for a lot of people,” she says.
Julie’s refusal to be satisfied with the status quo and her ability to identify bellwethers and quickly adjust strategies to make things happen for her clients are hallmarks of Julie’s successful career, and the reason she amasses a treasury of prestigious awards and 5-star reviews. Of course, her extensive knowledge of the entire Bay Area, down to zip code-level details like proximity to school districts and industry, is equally critical to her success. Attuned to important but often overlooked particulars like parking availability and commute tolerances, Julie educates her clients on the area’s various lifestyles and amenities. From bustling city condos to sprawling seaside mansions to cozy single-family homes in suburban pocket neighborhoods, Julie makes sure her clients are armed with the knowledge they need to determine how a given locale might affect their day-to-day lives.
Does Julie think the market will return to normal any time soon? “No, I do not think it will return to normal. In fact, I think there will be a new normal, and adapting will be slow. A lot of today’s home buyers don’t realize that the 2-3% interest rates we enjoyed in the recent past were actually an anomaly—a deliberate response to an economy that was struggling to recover, even a decade after the 2007/2008 housing crash. Today’s higher rates are actually closer to what we usually see in a typical, healthy economy.”
Julie does think mortgage rates will eventually come down somewhat, though. “I think the new normal will be slightly lower interest rates (but nowhere near 2-3%, unless something unforeseen happens to tip the economy too far in the wrong direction) and home prices that are closer to what we saw in the first half of 2022. I think this is what buyers will adapt to, and we’ll move forward from there,” she says.
One critical point of note Julie mentions relating to homeowners who bought their homes using 3% ARMs: “All the folks who got themselves into a 3% ARM [Adjustable Rate Mortgage] are facing a limited duration on that rate of about 5-7 years. When their loans reset, those monthly mortgages will drastically increase, and some of those people will be forced to sell. This will help with the region’s inventory problem, but those sellers will need to purchase new homes—and at higher interest rates, they may be forced to buy down instead of up. Some may even be forced to leave the Bay Area.”
For now, Julie will continue to adapt to the Bay Area’s dynamic real estate environment and employ strategies that benefit her clients, regardless of which side of the transaction they’re on.
About Julie Wyss:
Julie offers full-service residential real estate services to buyers and sellers around the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been recognized nationally among the elite top 1,000 agents in the country by Real Trends, as advertised in the Wall Street Journal, and consistently ranks in the top 100 Bay Area agents by The Leading 100.
