Sellers 'Missed the Boat,' San Joaquin Median Price Plunges 9.2% Since July

From the Stockton Record:

Much of the housing-market slowdown has been attributed to a spiraling of the number of homes for sale, pressuring sellers to lower prices to compete. For example, in February of last year, 777 houses were listed for sale throughout the county. That rose steadily, typically by several hundred new listings per month, to a high of 4,738 in August. Since then, the number of homes for sale countywide has fallen by about 500.

Many homeowners put their houses on the market thinking of the earlier big run-up in sales prices, she said. "They missed the boat, so they wanted to catch the last of the rise," [Natalie] Shishido, [owner of the Preferred Real Estate Group office in Tracy] said.

Also, the median sales price in the county fell from $400,000 in October to $386,000 last month, the TrendGraphix report said. That's down from a high of $425,000 in July.

From Fortune:

The area poised for the biggest fall in 2007? Stockton, Calif., where prices are expected to drop by 7.1 percent and another 5.3 percent in 2008. If you were lucky enough to have bought a couple of years ago, the 23 percent price growth in 2004 and 30 percent in 2005 should cushion any blow. But buyer, beware. If the forecast holds true, a home purchased in Stockton today for $350,000 will be worth a mere $307,917 two years from now. And that doesn't account for the additional toll inflation can take on the true value of your asset.

From the Tracy Press:

Home prices are on the decline in Tracy, which mirrors the overall decline in home prices and sales across the state. As of the end of November, the Central Valley Association of Realtors reported that the median sales price of existing homes in Tracy, Mountain House and Banta has been at $539,000 for the past six months, compared with $575,000 for the same period a year ago.
...
Meanwhile, the Central Valley between Sacramento and Bakersfield, where cities keep growing, has seen prices decline from $363,000 in June to $345,200 in October. "When you have a lot of new home building in recent years, then you have new homes in a market competing with existing homes," he [Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors] said. "Both markets will see downward pressure on prices.

"Our forecast for next year -- and it’s a fairly conservative forecast -- is we're not through with declining sales." Kleinhenz said he expects the number of homes sold in 2006 will drop about 23 percent from 2005. That decrease in sales will be about 7 percent in 2007.
...
The Central Valley Association of Realtors’ statistics for each city show the median sales price for an existing home in Tracy peaked at about $540,000 in October 2005....The median price for a house back in October was $515,000.
...
Home sales in Tracy have declined over the past year. The association reported 1,211 houses sold in the first 10 months of 2006, compared with 1,845 houses sold in the first 10 months of 2005.