'All Indicators Point to Further Price Reductions'

From the Sacramento Real Estate Blog:

In terms of price, this year’s average home sold in Sacramento County for $342,640, 12.4% less than last September’s average of $391,165. Sold price per square foot declined more, 14.2%, from $235.08 on average last year to $201.79 on average this year. The median price fell 12.1%, from $353,750 last year to $311,000 this year.

From the Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog:

Median asking prices in Sacramento County have fallen by $20,000 (6%) in the two months since the beginning of August. There was a 4% drop in the price-per-square-foot during that same period. Stress continues to build, and every week a greater percentage of the market is selling at a loss. Clearly, the Sacramento market is in transition, and all indicators point to further price reductions. There is no bottom in sight.

From the Sacramento Bee:

A car tire, an empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose and a handful of Bud Light cans litter the yard. Shoots of dried weeds stand 5 feet tall. The doors and windows are covered with plywood. This Sky Parkway duplex happens to be in south Sacramento, but Sacramento County officials say, the downturn in the housing market is resulting in scores of vacant uncared-for homes blighting local neighborhoods.

Sacramento County supervisors took action Tuesday aimed at forcing property owners to take care of their vacant properties or face escalating fines. The ordinance, approved on a 4-0 vote, also allows the county to take over maintenance of properties determined to be a blight on the community and pass on the bill to property owners.
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Supervisor Roger Dickinson said not just poor neighborhoods are affected. "We are seeing foreclosures in neighborhoods that are considered middle class or upper middle class," Dickinson said.

From the Modesto Bee:

There's the tax bill in the mail again. Hey! How come my tax bill still went up when property values are diving around here? Stanislaus County Assessor Doug Harms is getting a lot of calls like that these days. The calls usually stem from a misunderstanding of how the tax system works, Harms said, although if the caller bought the home in the past year or two, a reassessment may be in order.
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The Stanislaus assessor's office is reviewing the assessments on many homes that were sold in the past couple of years, Harms said -- more than 20,000 homes since spring 2006. Assessors found 4,400 of them had declined in value, and that was reflected in the July 1 tax rolls used for this year's tax bills. "We looked at everything that transferred (sold) after July 2005," he said.
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There will be many more adjustments for the 2008-09 tax year, Harms said. "We will move back this January to (reviewing sales back to) July of 2003. We had 5 percent to 10 percent a month increases for a couple of years, so the decreases will have to be pretty substantial to get back to 2003." There will be many adjustments, however. "It looks to us that the values have dropped at least as much in the last six months as they did the year before that," Harms said.