New Home Appreciation at 0.3%

After years of rapid appreciation, the year-over-year median net price for a new home rose a paltry 0.3%, according to the Sacramento Bee. Soft landing or hard?

Regionwide, a new home's median net price, which takes into account discounts and incentives offered by developers, rose to $484,147 for the quarter, $1,483 - or 0.3 percent - higher than a year earlier.

In some communities, median prices - the point at which half of the homes sold for more and half for less - actually dropped substantially. In Folsom and Lincoln, for instance, median prices of new homes during the first three months of 2006 were down 9.4 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively, over the first quarter of 2005...

A new home is now on the market for an average of 12 weeks, according to the Gregory figures...[U]nsold home inventory grew for the fourth straight quarter.

Catherine Munsee, manager of information services for the Gregory Group, said that developers may not be getting premium prices for new properties because, after the region's long building boom, there are now plenty of attractive almost-new homes on the market. "We're talking 1-to 3-year-old homes that are competing with new home products," she said.