Distress sales have finally caught up in Placer county after lagging behind Sacramento county for a long time. In this way, Placer is a lot more like El Dorado than Sacramento. The majority of sales this November were distress sales, a marked change from last month’s real estate sales, which were evenly divided between distressed and non-distressed sales and the month before then, where non-distressed dominated the real estate scene. Here are the details.

148 foreclosures sold in November, making up 48.7% of all sales. 51 short sales also sold, making up 16.8% of all sales. Foreclosure sales then have increased 174% over last year and short sales are up 143% over last year. As usually happens, the increased number of foreclosures on the market fueled sales and unit volume was up by 20.6%. Nondistressed sales suffered a decline of 41% – only a third of the market is now made up of non-distressed properties.

Obviously, this change has put a downward pressure on real estate prices. Sold price per square foot has fallen again. Last month, it was $166.99. This month, it is $155.52 a drop of 21.8% over last year’s high of $198.93. The average sales price for a house is also down 20.5% from $419,476 last November to $333,473 this November. This is also lower than last month’s average of $368,980. Median price has also declined 17.6% over last November’s high of $375,000 to rest at $309,000.

Inventory is at 6.3 months based on the last 12 months of sales and 5.5 months based on the last 6 months of sales. This is slightly better than last month’s inventory numbers of 7.3 and 6.2 respectively, but it’s too soon to tell if it signifies anything as wonderful as a real estate recovery.