'If it's a buyer's market, who's buying?'

From the Sacramento Bee:

It was two years ago this month that some housing experts began seeing the first signs that the Sacramento region's housing boom had begun to peak. "The bell has tolled," said Lyon Real Estate owner Mike Lyon in August 2005, declaring that the era of skyrocketing home values and sales may have hit its high-water mark. Ever since, the ride for Sacramento's housing market has been bumpy and it got no better last month....Lyon today believes "this real estate market is going to be lackluster until around the end of 2009."
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Sacramento, Placer and Solano counties in July showed some of the state's biggest year-over-year median sales price declines. Prices fell a record 10 percent from last year in Sacramento County, 8.5 percent in Placer County and 9.8 percent in Solano County.
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July 2007 ended with a record inventory of 15,927 houses for sale in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, reported the Sacramento property research firm TrendGraphix.
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Rocklin real estate agent Maxine Sunada toured a client through existing homes on Alder Creek Court in Lincoln. There, six of the street's 18 houses -- built in 2004 and originally priced in the $500,000s -- were for sale. Many had dead lawns and two bore signs saying "bank repo."

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From the News10 (also video):

The last thing the sagging real estate industry needs is would-be homebuyers who can't get a loan. The subprime mortgage meltdown is now spreading to other sectors of the market, including buyers with solid credit.
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Try telling prospective homebuyer Brandon Robinson it's a buyer's market. "Who's buying? If it's a buyer's market, who's buying?" he wants to know. Robinson was in contract to buy a bank-owned triplex in downtown Sacramento and planned to live in one of the units. But even with a 10 percent cash down payment and a solid credit score he could not find a lender.
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"No, this is not an isolated story," said real estate agent Michael Long who lost three solid deals in a single week because the buyers couldn't get financing. "Of all the things to happen, that would be the worst thing to happen for our market in Sacramento...."

Meanwhile, the Sacramento housing market makes another Forbes list, this time as the 3rd "worst" housing market in the country. Recently Forbes rated Sacramento as the 3rd riskiest and 6th least affordable housing market in the nation.

From the Stockton Record:

Washington Mutual has put its downtown Stockton building up for sale...The Seattle-based company said the move to try to sell the property isn't a reflection of the decline in the residential real-estate market. A sale would generate capital for the company, said Washington Mutual spokesman Tim McGarry.

From the Union Tribune:

Selling a home in Nevada County takes more than twice as long as it did two years ago, forcing many real estate agents to look for second jobs as the statewide market slows to the lowest level in 12 years..."What used to take 90 days is now taking 210 days to sell," said Teresa Dietrich-Treco, a Realtor from ERA Cornerstone Realty Group in Nevada County.
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Since January, 538 homes have sold through the MLS in Nevada County. That's about half the sales of a few years ago, Dietrich-Treco said. "It's really having a huge impact on Realtors. A lot of people are getting second jobs," Dietrich-Treco said.

From the Modesto Bee (via the Merced Sun-Star):

[Stanislaus County Assessor Doug] Harms said home value declines are widespread. "If you bought your house within the last three years, it's probably worth less today," said Harms, whose office is busy reassessing home values to potentially lower property taxes for thousands of homeowners.
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"We'll probably review every property that (sold) after July 2003," Harms said. "Some people are thrilled when we tell them they're getting a lower property tax bill, but I'm thinking, 'Hey, they just lost $50,000 in the value of their home.'"
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"Inventory is continuing to go up, but buyers are kind of waiting for prices to hit a bottom," Christiansen said. More than location or condition or anything else, Christiansen said what motivates buyers are low prices.

But home prices still aren't low enough to be affordable for most northern San Joaquin Valley families, according to Darryl Rutherford, a researcher for the California Coalition for Rural Housing. Considering Stanislaus County's median-income family earns about $54,000 a year, Rutherford said median home prices would have to drop to about $185,000 to be affordable.
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"For society as a whole, we would be better off if home prices went down further," said Rutherford, though he acknowledged such declines could be financially disastrous for individual homeowners.