Thursday, November 16, 2006

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.
...
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.
...
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.”

4 comments:

Lander said...

Hat tip: Ben Jones

Max said...

Just saw this in the Sac Bee:

Placer Sierra to lose its No. 1 depositor

Turns out, the depositor is a "nationwide mortgage service company, located in the midwest". H&R Block's headquarters is located in Kansas City.

Another domino...

Anonymous said...

I've been to Yuba City. Personally I would not spend more than 65-80k to live there.

Anonymous said...

"now it's causing them to drop probably farther than they should."

What is it with all of these people who think that a 10-15% drop after a 150-200% runup is an example of things falling "farther than they should". Seriously, what is wrong with these people.