April saw declining house values throughout the greater Sacramento region.  Placer County homeowners were not immune to this trend, however they can take comfort in the fact that the 24.6% decline in sold price per square foot value from April to April was at least not as pronounced as in Sacramento County, where sold price per square foot fell 33.9% from April to April.  Nevertheless, prices fell enough to drive demand up, so in April unit sales rose 15.3% from the previous year, with 370 sales compared to last year’s 321 sales.

With buyers purchasing a larger home on average this year, the average selling price this April in Placer County fell less dramatically than the sold price per square foot.  This average home sold in April in Placer County for $420,208, down 16.8% from last April’s average of $505,041.  The median sale price fell 19.5% during this time, from $435,000 in April of 2007 to $350,000 in April of 2008.

Placer County Foreclosures make up only 9.8% of active inventory, but accounted for 43.2% of all sales in April.  Conversely, short sales account for 26.2% of the active inventory, but made up only 9.7% of sales in April.  Seen from the point of view of how many units are available in each category, we can break inventory down as follows:

Overall inventory:  8 months.

Bank foreclosures (REO) inventory:  1.5 months

Short sales inventory:  18.3 months

Non-distressed sales:  9 months

The expired to sold ratio in Placer County, one indicator of the direction the market is moving, is down this year to 37.3%, compared to last year’s figure of 56.4%.

Our Sacramento site has recently published listings for all Greater Sacramento Investment Properties, which includes the following listings for Placer County:

• Placer County Multi-Unit Investment Properties (all listings)
• Placer County Duplexes (2 units)
• Triplexes (3 Units)
• Fourplexes (4 Units)
• More than four units

These listings are updated regularly.

Vicki Agregado-Babcock will hold her beautiful listing at 3262 Sandhurst Court in Cameron Park open on Sunday, May 18th, from 1PM to 4PM.

For more information, check out the following links:

• 3262 Sandhurst Court Web Site (with photo gallery)
• Map to Property 
• School Information
• Schedule a Showing

The large number of foreclosures and the falling prices that result caused an upsurge in demand in the Roseville real estate market in April.  April’s average home sold in Roseville for $362,468, down 17.4% from last April’s average sale price of $439,080.  Sold price per square foot fell 25.9% during this time, from an average of $225.40 in April of 2007 to an average of $166.96 in April of 2008.  At the same time, the median home selling price fell 13.2%, from $401,950 in April of 2007 to $348,950 in April of 2008.

Taking advantage of falling prices, buyers bought 40.2% more homes than last April, as unit volume rose from 102 units in April of 2007 to 143 units this April.  Sixty-six of the 143 units that sold this April were bank owned (46.2%).  Only 11.2% (sixteen homes) were short sales. 42.7% of sales were non-distressed, so non-distressed homes continued to outperform short sales even though short sales are much more inexpensive, on average.

Overall, inventory numbers are at the border between a buyer’s market and a seller’s market — though to be sure this is something of a paper victory, since what’s driving demand are the distressed sales.  There are 6.2 months of inventory overall.  For non distressed sales there are 6 months, while for short sales there is a huge 16 month supply.  For REOs — the real seller’s market — the inventory available is only 1.6 months.  The expired to sold ratio was an encouraging 21.7% this April, down from 52.9% last April.