DataQuick: Sacramento Home Prices 27.6% Off Peak

From the Sacramento Bee:

Sacramento County's median sales prices slipped to $280,000 during the month, down more than $100,000 and 27.6 percent off their August 2005 peaks. Those prices were the lowest since February 2004, DataQuick reported.
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The continuing decline in home values prompted Sacramento-based researcher TrendGraphix to declare December the "resurrection of the $200,000 house." The firm reported that 12 percent of the 13,994 homes now for sale in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties are priced below $200,000, with the majority being homes repossessed by banks. A year ago just 2 percent of homes for sale in the region were priced below $200,000.

From CNN Money (hat tip siflsockpuppet)

A former real estate appraiser for Washington Mutual is suing the bank, claiming she was blacklisted last year for providing a housing market forecast that was too gloomy. Jeniffer Wertz, who is seeking unspecified damages, says WaMu stopped accepting her appraisals in mid-2007 a month after she reported that her local housing market in California was "declining."

A pessimistic outlook makes it harder to extend outsized, risky mortgages to borrowers whose homes can't support them. But Wertz's assessment shouldn't have been controversial at the time. According to the National Association of Realtors, home prices in her hometown of Sacramento fell $9,000, or 2.5 percent, to $356,500 in the second quarter of 2007. And most economists were already characterizing the housing market as a bubble that was ready to burst.

From Fox40:

Natomas is the city's, let alone the area's biggest area of growth, adding as much as $4billion per year into the economy. But under FEMA's proposals new construction or remodeling must be done above flood levels as high as 20 feet which is not practical. [Sacramento's Director of Development Bill] Thomas says for construction projects that means "within a year's time, we're going to see a significant drop to hundreds of millions to billions dollars will begin shutting down." That on top of a slow housing market is a double blow for a city already on a tight budget. "Everything from best practice cutbacks we'll have to start scaling back in our workforce perhaps"

From News10:

"The [flood] insurance is not too bad but long run it will be a huge cost," said Terry Webber. She said she and her husband would like to move, but know that now the prospect of selling their house in Natomas is even worse than it was before. "Well if nobody wants to buy a house out here, where are the prices gonna go, but down? Demand is what drives the market," said Mike Birdsall, who works in the foreclosure industry. "I think it'll impact the purchasing side which will also impact the value."