CAR: Sacramento Median Price Decline Breaks 30% YoY, Sales Rebound

From the Sacramento Business Journal:

The median price for homes that sold in Greater Sacramento in February was $258,680, a 30 percent decrease from a year ago, according to the California Association of Realtors...Home sales in the region...were up 10.7 percent compared to February 2007.

From the Appeal-Democrat:

Yuba-Sutter existing home sales also picked up last month. February saw 94 sales, up from 62 sales during February 2007, according to figures provided by Lloyd Leighton, a Yuba City-based real estate agent...Area sales prices were down to a median price of $231,000, dropping 17.5 percent from February 2007's price of nearly $280,000.

Leighton said it was too early to say whether the home market has hit bottom in Yuba-Sutter but the rise in sales was good to see...Leighton said he thinks the increase in activity is real. After several months of falling home prices and slumping sales, the local real estate market could be coming back — barring a dramatic increase in interest rates or a recession.

From Roseville & Rocklin Today:

According to HousingTracker, the number of homes on the market in their defined Sacramento area was 15,100 as of March 24. Surprisingly this is down from a week earlier and 0.8 percent below a month ago. Rather than seeing inventory grow, it appears to have stayed relatively flat for the past 12 weeks.

The level of inventory is still high when compared to the level of sales. Although holding right now it is still 6.6 percent above where we were a year ago. We would have to hold the current inventory level through April to be at the same level as we were at the end of April last year. With foreclosures and short sales still increasing that is a tall order. The good news is that spring inventory is not growing at a rate that it did in the last two years.

From the Sacramento Business Journal:

84 Lumber Co. said it has closed nine stores, including its outlet on Florin Road in Sacramento, as a result of consolidation. The privately held company said the closings are partly because of the slowing housing market.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Federal prosecutors in Sacramento announced Monday that 19 people have been indicted in a massive mortgage fraud case that preyed on people close to foreclosure and stripped homeowners in two dozen states of millions of dollars in equity. McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, unsealed the contents of two indictments Monday that detail a conspiracy to strip 115 people of $12.6 million in equity and their homes in cases that stretch from California to New York.
...
The case – the largest equity-skimming scam in the country – affected about a half-dozen Sacramento-area residents and came to an FBI agent's attention when a North Highlands victim reached an FBI economic crimes agent who was taking calls from the complaint line.

From the Stockton Record:

In 2002, as interest rates fell following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Lodi officials refinanced about $47 million worth of bonds issued three years earlier to pay for electric utility infrastructure projects. The bonds were refinanced from a fixed rate to a variable interest rate that resets every week. But the insurer of those bonds, MBIA, was one that succumbed to the housing downturn, and the fallout has trickled down. Earlier this month, investors pulled out $2.5 million worth of their bonds, which now are being held by a French bank at a higher interest rate until the city can resell them. More investors have followed suit, with more than $5 million in additional requests so far, but those bonds were resold much quicker, city officials said.