'When you put on a super sale, people show up and buy'

From the Sacramento Bee:

[W]ith 12,000-plus "For Sale" signs in the region, the market hasn't yet reached bottom, said ReMax's [Randy] Dunham. At month's end there were 12,606 homes for sale in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to Sacramento-based researcher TrendGraphix. The peak in August 2007 was 16,262.
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"Borrowers are more cautious about what they can afford," said Michele Dillingham, a senior loan consultant at Sacramento-based Vitek Mortgage. "A lot of people are buying at below what they would qualify for. They saw what happened (with foreclosures) and don't want it to happen to them."

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From Home Front:

Is this sustainable?

I asked veteran Sacramento real estate Carlos Kozlowski of Coldwell banker and his opinion was: yes. Kozlowski believes there is enough pent-up demand to absorb all the thousands of bank repos still to come on the market this year as rising numbers of people continue to lose their homes to foreclosure.

"Prices are not going up. Prices will stay somewhere about where they are until this inventory is absorbed," he said. Then will come the new wave of buyers: the foreclosure refugees allowed back in the market with new federally-backed mortgages. "People who lost homes a year or two ago will be able to buy in 18 months," he said.

From the Daily Democrat:

Yolo County home sales for April almost equaled those of a year earlier, although prices are still nearly 27 percent below last year's figures.
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It's premature to say that April's numbers signaled a potential housing rebound in California, one of the nation's hottest markets during the boom, said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. Uncertainties include whether the economy gets stuck in a recession, whether the credit crunch persists, and if foreclosures continue to rise, he said. "I think we're a ways from seeing much of a rebound in home values," he said. "When you put on a super sale, people show up and buy."

From the Appeal Democrat:

Thousands of local residents will receive cuts to their property taxes this summer as a shrinking housing market pulls home prices far below the heights their owners paid in a once white-hot Central Valley market. Though the reductions will return more money to residents, assessors say it will chip away at already-thin police, fire and school budgets in the 2008-09 fiscal year, which starts July 1.
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The heaviest blows in Yuba County will be felt in the communities that sprang up or grew quickly in the first half of the decade, according to Brown — especially Plumas Lake, East Linda, the eastern foothills and Wheatland. The Linda Rural Fire District, whose area includes the 5-year-old Plumas Lake, now relies on property taxes for 80 percent of its revenue, he said.

So abrupt is the rollback that Yuba County officials predict a decline in the total value of residential parcels — a county first.