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.

Forsesthill is a small town in Placer County, with few units selling every month. The small sample size tends to throw off statistical generalizations you might want to make. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at the numbers we do have and see how Foresthill is doing in the first quarter of 2008.

Seven units sold during this quarter, at an average sale price of $292,071, down from eleven units last year at an average sale price of $393,000. This looks like a very dramatic drop in price on the face of it, until you realize that this year’s crop of homes was almost 25% smaller than last year’s. The net result is that sold price per square foot fell only 13.6%.

There are forty-nine homes currently for sale through the MLS in Foresthill. Of these, two are bank foreclosures (4.1%) and five are short sales (10.2%). This year of the seven homes that closed, two were foreclosures (28.6%).

With fifty-three homes selling yearly in Foresthill, the forty-nine available homes means that there is 11.1 months of unsold inventory.

I spend a lot of time writing about the numbers in different areas, and yes, I can assure you:  statistics really are pretty dry.  Sometimes the results you get are entertainingly obvious, however.  For example, last year Granite Bay’s homes lost only 9.2% of their (sold price per square foot) value, as compared to a 35% drop in Lincoln.  Well, see, that’s obvious.  Everybody who has money enough to live in Granite Bay would want to live there.  Why not?  The schools are great.  The houses are gorgeous.  You’re near the lake.  I love Granite Bay.  Everybody loves Granite Bay.  What’s not to love?

In the first quarter of 2008, the average buyer spent $913,000 for their home, 3.6% more than last year’s average of $880,932.  Prices were falling, however, so that 3.6% increase in price fetched a home 3521 square foot home, 14.2% bigger than last year’s 3084 square feet.  As a result, as we mentioned above, sold price per square foot fell 9.2% from first quarter of 2007 ($285.65) to first quarter of 2008 ($259.30). 

If homes are holding their value much better in Granite Bay than in other areas, the flip side of that equation is that far fewer Granite Bay homes are changing hands.  Last year, twenty-six homes per month sold during the first quarter.  This year that number is down to eleven.  As a result, inventory is creeping up in Granite Bay, and currently is at 11.4 months.

This market update covers West Rocklin 95765, and East Rocklin, 95677, over the period from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.

From the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, home prices dropped substantially in Rocklin. In the first quarter of 2008, the average home sold for $383,233 in Rocklin, down 17.3% from the year before, when the average selling price was $463,240.  The median sale price fell about the same amount, 17.8%, from $432,000 in 2007 to $355,000 in 2008.  With a larger group of homes being sold this year, sold price per square foot fell a little bit more, about 19%, from $209 per square foot last year to $169 per square foot this year.

Short sales sold moderately well in Rocklin, but still only reflected a fraction of the short sales in inventory.  15.1% of the sales in the first quarter of 2008 were short sales, but 30.1% of homes on the market are short sales.  In contrast, 42.4% of the homes that sold in the first quarter were bank foreclosures, but only 10.9% of the homes in inventory are foreclosures.

Related Links

Roseville Real Estate Market Update

Homes for Sale in East Rocklin

Homes for Sale in West Rocklin

General Home Search

Well, I don’t want to embarrass master builder so-and-so by printing his name, but one of the details he didn’t oversee was hiring a listing agent who proofreads.

Careful attention to detail, indeed.

In the first quarter of this year, the average home sold in Auburn for $431,818, down 11% from first quarter of 2007.  At the same time, with buyers purchasing a house that was eight per cent bigger than last year, sold price per square foot fell 17.6%, from $259.15 in 2007 to $213.67 in the first quarter of 2008.  This year’s average home was 2021 square feet in size and was on the market 104 days before being sold (i.e., 104 days between being listed and when a purchase agreement was accepted).

In the first quarter of 2007, 3.7% of the homes that sold were bank foreclosures, and 1.2% were short sales.  This year those numbers had risen to 24.5% and 3.8%, respectively.

Unit volume was down in Auburn in 2008, with 53 homes sold in the first quarter compared to 82 in the first quarter of 2007.  Partly as a result of these sluggish recent sales, inventory is fairly high in Auburn at 10.1 months.

One of the indicators that tells you a lot about how a particular real estate market is doing is the amount of outstanding inventory there is. When we talk about real estate inventory, all this means is the number of homes that are for sale divided by the average number of homes that sell every month. Thus, for example, if there are 100 homes for sale in a given area and 25 homes sell every month in that same area on average, there are four months of inventory.

When inventory levels are below six months, especially if there are few distressed sales (short sales and bank foreclosures), we say that an area is experiencing a seller’s market. As I’m sure you’ve heard if you haven’t been living on Mars, most of Placer County and Sacramento County are currently in a buyer’s market.

When we look at the Placer County numbers, one interesting result we find is that the areas with the most distressed sales have the lowest inventory numbers. On one end of the spectrum, Foresthill and Granite Bay have high inventory levels — above eleven months — but the lowest percentages of active short sales and foreclosures. On the other end, Roseville has the lowest inventory number of any Placer County area we looked at — seven months — but also has the highest number of foreclosures and is second only to Lincoln for short sales.

This high foreclosures means low inventory is not a rule that applies universally, however. Outside Placer County it breaks down completely. Sacramento County overall has higher numbers for foreclosures and short sales than any area we looked at in Placer County, yet inventory is high at 10 months. And in a true buyers market, we find extremely low inventory coupled with low levels of distressed sales.

The following table shows how the current inventory breaks down for several areas in Placer County, and shows how this compares to Placer County overall and Sacramento County. We include current inventory as well as the percentages of current inventory that are bank foreclosures (REOs) and short sales.