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%.