Fair Oaks homes declined in value over the last year, but not as rapidly as in the rest of Sacramento County.  The average Fair Oaks home sold in July for $174.22, down 21.9% from last year’s average of $222.96.  At the same time, this year’s average home was smaller than last, so the drop in average sale price was greater, 35.4%, with the average home this July selling for $307,838 versus $476,462 last July. 

Demand in Fair Oaks was stronger this year than last, with unit sales increasing 70.4% from 27 units selling in 2007 to 46 units in July of 2008.  Of these 46 units, twenty-two were non-distressed sales (47.8%), 5 (10.9%) were short sales, and 19 (41.3%) were bank foreclosures.  Fair Oaks inventory is slightly higher than the county-wide average, with 5.8 months in inventory at present.

In many area markets, prices have continued to decline into 2008, but the worst year for the number of sales was really last year, 2007.  Last year, buyers were watching prices fall and hesitant to dive in — this year buyers have begun to feel that prices have fallen low enough to make buying worthwhile.

The return of the buyers to the market this year has been especially pronounced in Sacramento County, where I recently reported that Metrolist MLS agents and brokers have already sold more homes by mid August of 2008 than we have in all of 2007.  The same is not true in Placer County, but sales are nevertheless up.  Looking at unit sales in January through July of each year, for example, we find that 1,957 homes sold in 2007 in Placer County, while 2,467 homes sold in the same period in 2008.  This works out to a unit volume increase of about 26%.

If Sacramento County has already sold more homes than in all of 2007, and if Placer County is experiencing a healthy increase in sales, El Dorado County is the laggard.  Sales through July are down about 5% from last year in El Dorado County, and the slow unit sales there have kept inventory at high levels — currently around 12.7 months of inventory compared to 6.7 months in Placer and County 5.3 months in Sacramento County.

Prices fell in Roseville from July to July, and buyers took responded to the falling prices by buying more homes than in 2007.  Including condos and single family homes, the average home sold in Roseville in July for $340,858, down 21.4% from last year’s average of $433,858.  Sold price per square foot was down 21.9% during this time, from $211.22 in July of 2007 to $164.86 in July of 2008.

With prices falling and interest remaining relatively low, demand picked up in Roseville as it has wherever the price reductions have been deep enough.  Unit volume was up in 42.9% over last year, with 180 units selling this July versus 126 last July.  Because volume has been up for several months in a row, inventory is low — indeed, it’s down to 5.6 months if you base your inventory number on the last year of sales volume, or down to 4.6 months if you go by the last six months.

It remains to be seen whether inventory will stay low into the fall and winter this year, when sales traditionally slow down somewhat, but so far the inventory numbers and the unit sales are both good news for Roseville.

Here are some of the raw numbers for Roseville for July:

Unit Volume Data

Price Data

Inventory (Based on 12 months of prior sales)

Inventory (Based on 6 months of prior sales)

Let’s hope this works so I can go home.