Yuba City Housing Market Takes a "Cold Bath"

From the Marysville-Yuba City Appeal Democrat:

After years of almost surreal rises in home prices, home sellers and builders in Northern California are being sobered by the cold bath of a slowdown - and the Yuba-Sutter area is no exception.

Local real-estate agents reported declines in single-family housing sales and prices compared to the previous year, part of a regionwide market correction that The Associated Press said dropped October sales by 24 percent from their October 2005 total.
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Quoting figures from the industry's Multiple Listing Service, a common catalog of available properties, Leighton reported declines from last fall in sales, prices and speed of turnaround, or the speed at which a newly listed home is sold. October home purchases fell 31 percent from October 2005 and median selling prices sank from about $310,000 to $280,000, while the projected time to sale for newly listed houses more than doubled, to 9.3 months.
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According to Mid-Valley agents, the contraction puts a damper on a years-long boom but reflects a return to reality, not a market crisis. “The self-fulfilling prophecy is the opposite of what we had in the good market,” said Lloyd Leighton, a Yuba City broker. “The herd mentality drove prices higher than it should have; now it's causing them to drop probably farther than they should.”