At the Bottom of the Pyramid

From the Sacramento Bee:

The typical first-time buyer, Sacramento real estate agents say, is between 25 to 35 years old, with a household income between $60,000 and $70,000 a year.
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Members of this group -- often young and mobile -- also must consider the risks of being transferred or moving to new cities before they gain enough equity to avoid getting stung financially.

"Eight years in my lifetime? I have no idea where I'm going to be in eight years," says Alison Munro, 28, of Vacaville. Munro and her fiancé, both teachers, are prime first-time buyer candidates. They're saving for a down payment and looking at options from Sacramento to Chico, as well as markets in Oregon and Colorado. "We're thinking spring now and maybe next summer," she says.

Munro is among those who believe prices have further to fall. She says her peers have experienced all manner of frustration with housing prices that soared away from them in their 20s."I hear people say, 'I'm never going to be able to get a house in California,' " she says.

Others who bought late last year and lost equity, or who find themselves with a mortgage that allows too few other pleasures, are looking for help. Munro says she has friends in Benicia who took on roommates to help make payments."It's not that they couldn't make the mortgage payment," Munro says. "But they couldn't go on vacations in the summer."
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Growing numbers of financially troubled properties also represent new discount possibilities for buyers, real estate agents say. Foreclosures and short sales, where banks accept lower prices to avoid repossessing the house, are up. So is the number of bank-owned properties. "I know there's at least 200 in our four-county area," says Carey Covey, a broker with Sacramento's Cook Realty.
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Across the capital region, home builders are trying to reach first-time buyers by going small, pushing condominiums to 25 percent of the new-home market, pricing some units in the $250,000 range and beginning to build residences that friends can buy together.