Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Zacramento

From the Sacramento Business Journal:

Median home values in the Sacramento area dropped 7.4 percent in the first quarter from a year ago [and down 9.2% from peak], the latest evidence the housing market slowdown continues in the region.

Yolo County endured the region's largest decline in value, at 13.2 percent to $394,990, according to Zillow.com, an online real estate tracking company in Seattle.
...
Sacramento County had the region's second-largest drop at 8.1 percent to $354,681. Existing home prices in El Dorado and Placer counties fell 6.4 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively.
...
All 35 communities in the four-county region -- from Antelope to Woodland -- reported declines in price. [Also, all but one neighborhood in the city of Sacramento suffered price declines, according to Zillow.]
Click here to compare to other price indexes.

15 comments:

patient renter said...

"All 35 communities in the four-county region -- from Antelope to Woodland -- reported declines in price."

I'm sure that Real would like to chime in that Gold River, his beloved mecca of tract home hell... i mean, controlled living, is immune to decline, and that he finds these allegations to be slanderous.

Cmyst said...

Real likes Gold River?
I have a client there. They moved into a home their adult son owned, one of the condo-style fourplexes. They think it stinks. No one is allowed to have yard sales, and there isn't much neighborhood community feeling, according to them.
I don't like it that much because all the neighborhoods look alike, and all the houses look alike. They even have identical signs proclaiming each little enclave.

norcaljeff said...

Sippin? What's the silverlining here, article is out of date? lol

patient renter said...

"Real likes Gold River?"

Yea I think he owns a house and lives there.

"They think it stinks."

I agree, for the reasons you mentioned. Natzi-like HOAs are not my thing. Sure, they may keep property value up, but who cares about property value when quality of life isn't as good as it could be. Besides, no property values will escape this mess unscathed, regardless of what Real thinks.

Cmyst said...

My GPS device (Garmin, buy one, I own stock!) insists that Gold River is really Rancho Cordova.

Anonymous said...

"Natzi-like HOAs are not my thing"

Amen! I have a masters in art, BA is design, another art history, and some blue-haired b!tch wants to tell me that my trim color clashes with her azaelias or that my house color is not historically accurate and yet some cheap-assed taiwainese faux-tuscan concrete lawn ornament she has prominently displyed in her frontyard is in keeping with her mid-century residential moderne home? OMG don't get me started >; )

Anonymous said...

Well it is except when trying to manipulte the market value.

Did you know that Tahoe and Oak Park is really outer Fab 40s?

Perfect Storm said...

Did you know that Tahoe and Oak Park is really outer Fab 40s?

So is the lower part of Del Paso Heights near Royal Oaks Post Office.

Anonymous said...

bah text doesn't handle sarcasim well.

I had someone try to pitch buying in Oak Park to me using this strategy. My reply was "why yes I did just fall off the turnip truck yesterday! how did you ever know?" with a straight face. The poor agent didn't know what to say to me after that.

smf said...

OK, I will admit that I would live in certain areas of Gold River that don't look so communist.

But I have a funny and true story. We were looking at homes there, and from Zillow I gather that GR has always been expensive.

There is one that some flippers bought in 10/06 for $690K and then tried to flip it for $850K. Oops! Their latest offer to us was for $695K, which was not accepted.

BFB said...

So in spite of all the price declines documented everywhere, the areas I'm tracking (95814/16/19) have actually had a rise in asking prices. Is this just me, or are you also seeing this in other areas? I figure these sellers wanted to get in before the expected rush (uh, good luck with that). Not too much activity in East Sac., though this place on 36th St. just sold for $700K. . . insane, but still less than asking. There have been a few other sales too; it will be interesting to see what they went for.

patient renter said...

"the areas I'm tracking (95814/16/19) have actually had a rise in asking prices."

I don't look very hard, but I have seen this trend around areas I watch. Really though, it doesn't matter. Final sale prices are what matter.

Our unnaturally high levels of inventory reflect the overvalued nature of current asking prices. Thus, as others have said, the measured (from sales data) price decreases to date don't capture the full extent of the true decrease in value of our market.

AgentBubble said...

In my opinion, the issue with those 3 zip codes is the low number of sales they have, which affects the statistics. It's really hard to get an accurate representation of an area when you have low numbers to work with. Here are the number of sales for those zip codes broken down by first quarter:

2005 - 127 sales
2006 - 105 sales
2007 - 88 sales

With such a small sample size, one or two houses can considerably skew the mean and median to the point that it's not very precise.

... said...

norcaljeff "you talking to me?"

Dataquick shows 9 of 35 zips in Sac County show increases YOY and 3 of 35 shows "0" or N/A

95670 (gold River) gained 6%

If you put them on a map you see mostly the north east area, inventory low, sales steady, no saturation of new tract homes...

Do I trust Zillow, NO.

Maybe when somebody there gets off their lazy fat a** and actually looks at the data their computers are churning instead of cashing paychecks and stock offerings...

BFB said...

Oh, I realize that the midtown/east sac area will have relatively skewed numbers. I don't actually pay much attention to the stats for this area, I focus more on individual houses that are for sale/sold/NOD, etc.

And without exception, the actual sale prices are always lower than asking.

It was the apparent trend in the last month or so that was interesting. I just saw another place today on the corner of 41st and D went "sold" on the sign. This is a tiny cottage, and the asking price was way too high -- $425K. It will be interesting to see if the actual sale prices tick up a bit with the asking prices for April/May.

I agree with sippn about Zillow: the "zestimate" is pretty useless. But the site is convenient as a quick lookup of other data, and when mixed with zip realty, county tax pages etc., it's quite useful.