Sacramento Real Estate Market - July 2009 Water Cooler

Post off-topic links, observations, and stories about the Sacramento real estate market here. Please read the comment policy before posting.

Sacramento DataQuick Stats for May 2009

From the Sacramento Bee (updated article):

Sacramento County showed one of the biggest improvements regionally, with prices for existing homes alone climbing a dramatically higher 9.4 percent - from $160,000 in March and April to $175,000 in May. But that was still 22 percent below the May 2008 median of $225,000.

DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage attributed the abrupt May rise to a sales mix reflecting fewer hugely discounted bank repos and more higher-priced homes. "It's not home appreciation," he said. "It's just getting back to a more normal distribution of sales across the home price spectrum." Still, he said, "It could be that we've seen the lowest median in Sacramento County."

Statistics by county
Statistics by zip
Other Central Valley counties [pdf]

Also: Sacramento area misses move-up homebuyers -- they're staying put

Sacramento Real Estate Market - June 2009 Water Cooler

Post off-topic links, observations, and stories about the Sacramento real estate market here. Please read the comment policy before posting.

Repo Flood or Trickle?

From the Sacramento Bee:

More than 20,000 troubled homes are growing into a massive "phantom" inventory that could potentially be unloaded onto an already fragile housing market.
...
[ForeclosureRadar's Sean] O'Toole, for one, believes big banks may continue to foreclose more slowly, and will "dribble out" their accumulated repo properties in hopes of a market change. "I talk to them," he said. "It's like, 'If we don't foreclose, we see the market heat up again. You get a certain number of people who believe it's a bottom and the prices come back. Then we don't need to foreclose. These people can sell and get out from under them and we end up OK.' " Dribbling them out slowly would keep prices stable, he said. But it also would prolong the housing correction.
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Field Check's [Mark] Hanson doesn't buy O'Toole's theory, even as they work off the same data. He predicts a flood of cheap repo inventory on the market this summer. "The government and bank-specific moratoriums and modification initiatives have held back the massive wave of foreclosures," he said, "kicking the can down the road. But there is only so high the floodwaters can build before breaking the dam."

Yet even a torrent of repo inventory on the market won't pull median prices – now at $160,000 for existing Sacramento County homes – any lower, he said. That's because more higher-priced homes are in the foreclosure process and will tug the median upward in coming months. "It does not mean the market is getting better," he said.

Sacramento Real Estate Market - May 2009 Water Cooler

Post off-topic links, observations, and stories about the Sacramento real estate market here. Please read the comment policy before posting.

DataQuick's Sacramento Real Estate Market Statistics for April 2009

SacBee: Area median home prices begin to stabilize
Updated: Capital-area home prices stop slide, for now
DataQuick's Sacramento real estate market statistics: by zip, by county
Modesto Bee: Stockton Metro At 1999 Levels

Sacramento Real Estate Market Charts - April 2009

After steadily declining this spring, average price per square foot rose 1.8% from March. According to TrendGraphix, that was the first monthly increase in Sacramento County since April 2007. Prices are still below January levels and down 23.1% from last year.

Turning to median price, the Sacramento Association of Realtors reports the median price in Sacramento County (and West Sacramento) fell 29.5% in April. That was the first year-over-year decline since March 2008 not to reach at least -30%.




So far, no "spring bounce" for median price as measured by the MLS. The median for single-family homes has been essentially flat since February. Unlike the previous three years, the median price has remained below January levels.




The median price is now at April 2001 levels.

Sales in April were 17% higher than the previous year. That was the smallest year-over-year increase since March 2008.




Looking at the historical record, sales remain at relatively high levels. While the inevitable spring bounce between February and March was the weakest in at least 9 years, that is not surprising considering the record sales of January and February.

Here's a look at the percentage of MLS sales which were bank-owned. At its peak in January 2009, REO sales made up three-fourths of total MLS sales. That proportion has dropped off in the last few months as REO inventory has shrunk, presumably due to legislative tinkering and private foreclosure moratoriums.

Finally, here's an update on Sacramento County's foreclosure statistics from ForeclosureRadar.

NY Times: Signs of Recovery in Sacramento's Housing Market

From the New York Times:

Is this what a bottom looks like? This city was among the first in the nation to fall victim to the real estate collapse. Now it seems to be in the earliest stages of a recovery, a hopeful sign for an economy mired in trouble and anxiety.

The Times cites increased sales to investors and first-time buyers, reduced inventory, and stabilizing prices as signs of recovery.

“It’s fragile, and it could easily be fleeting,” said an MDA DataQuick analyst, Andrew LePage. “But history suggests this is how things might look six months before prices bottom out.”...No one in Sacramento is predicting that local housing prices, which have been cut in half from their mid-2005 peak, are going to reclaim much of that ground anytime soon. Instead, this is what passes for wild-eyed optimism: a belief that things have finally stopped getting worse. “A period of price stagnation would boost a lot of spirits,” Mr. LePage said.
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“[Upcoming wave of foreclosures]...will stall any progress toward stability,” said Michael Lyon, chief executive of Lyon Real Estate. “The prospects for a recovery are fool’s gold.” Mr. Lyon expects further price declines and slowing sales. But David Berson, the chief economist for the mortgage insurer PMI, argues that such bleakness from the people whose livelihood is selling houses is itself a positive sign. “Things are awful at the bottom, and we’re at the bottom,” Mr. Berson said. “No question about it. But the trend going forward should be higher sales, and that will eventually affect prices.”

Have we hit bottom? Please vote in the poll on the right. Add your opinion in the comments below.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Nearly four years into California's housing downturn, close to 24,000 Sacramento-area homes and apartments are vacant, a number that climbed 40 percent in the past year, according to a Bee analysis of federal data. Roughly a third, or about 7,200, of the six-county region's vacant homes have been empty longer than a year. About 3,500 have been empty longer than two years.
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Reasons vary for the surge of vacant dwellings. Area real estate agents and others Monday cited recent foreclosure moratoriums and banks increasingly sitting on large numbers of repossessed homes. Apartment communities also report rising vacancies as 11.3 percent regional unemployment forces renters to double up or move back in with family members.

ACORN to the rescue

"Protesters disrupted several foreclosure auctions Tuesday on the Sacramento County Courthouse steps, winning a temporary cancellation of one and sending an unidentified auctioneer to the hospital with chest pains. Bidders on dozens of foreclosed Sacramento-area homes, all declining to provide their names, called the ACORN protest the first major disruption of an established auction schedule that plays out every weekday at the courthouse...."

More from the Sacramento Bee.

Baghdad Bob of Real Estate, Arizona Edition

From the New York Times (hat tip HBB):

Phoenix has achieved the unwelcome distinction of becoming the first major American city where home prices have fallen in half since the market peaked in the middle of the decade, according to data released Tuesday. Though historical statistics are scant, experts said the precipitous decline probably had few if any equals in modern times.
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Greg Swann, a Phoenix real estate agent, took a moment to marvel at the news. “What happened here will some day be a new chapter in ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,’ ” the classic survey of investing mania, he said. “We were living during the boom like there was no tomorrow. And guess what? Now it’s tomorrow.”

Greg Swann, June 2006: 21 reasons to bank on the Phoenix real estate market . . .

"Realistically, how overvalued are Phoenix home prices?" Obviously, I consider this a profoundly silly question, but to lurk among the BubbleBloggers and their seething commentariat is to acquire an education in a slice of America invisible from this side of the sewer gratings.
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We keep our own home sales price statistics, so we have no doubt that values are down from their high in December. How much? Right now, about 4%. Could they go lower? Certainly. Will they drop by the huge amounts HousingPanic and his flying monkeys seem to yearn for? This seems very unlikely. What seems much more likely is that Phoenix will recover from the hangover of last year’s buying binge and get back to a steady rate of growth — historically 6% a year. The reason this should happen is very simple: Population growth. Metropolitan Phoenix is a unique real estate market.
...
The BubbleBloggers will someday bawl balefully in private, but they will never, ever admit that they have been very publicly very foolish. You will know and I will know and in the secret chambers of their hearts they will know they were wrong all along.

A reader's response in the comments:

Garth Farkley July 29th, 2006 7:10 pm

Just remember, Greg, the internet is forever. Some of us will be right and some will be wrong. I acknowledge the possibility of my own error. In my experience humility is generally a mark of wisom. You, however, set yourself up as an icon of certitude. Good luck with it. Time will certainly tell.

80% Off

From the Sacramento Bee:

It's now possible to buy a Sacramento home for less than the price of a Honda Accord. At least two dozen homes in the Sacramento region sold during the last three months for $25,000 or less....In Oak Park and Del Paso Heights...median home prices have fallen 80 percent from their mid-2006 peak to around $60 a square foot.
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On Tuesday...Deutsche Bank lowered the price on a vacant, 728-square-foot home on 21st Avenue in the heart of Oak Park from $29,000 to $19,000. The house had belonged to the same family for years. An investor purchased it for $197,000, or $270 per square foot, in mid-2005, property records show...Seven months after buying it, the first investor sold the property again to another out-of-town buyer for $255,000, or $350 per square foot. In December, Deutsche Bank foreclosed. Today, the home is selling for $26 per square foot.
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Most real estate experts expect many more sub-$25,000 homes on the market. They predict more foreclosures, leading to more vacant homes, leading to more desperate banks..."There's a whole lot of inventory that has not been cleared," said [Real estate investor Reggie] Lal, the real estate investor, referring to foreclosures still on the market. The number of homes selling for less than $25,000, he added, is "going to explode."

Related post: Housing Bubble Casualties: Professionals 'Suckered' into Oak Park

Sacramento Real Estate Market - April 2009 Water Cooler

Post off-topic links, observations, and stories about the Sacramento real estate market here. Please read the comment policy before posting.

Redfin Comes to Sacramento

Redfin Expands to New York, California's Central Valley
Blog: Sacramento Sweet Digs
Sacramento Homes For Sale/Market Trends
All Sacramento Area Cities

Price Per Square Foot: Spring Slide (So Far)

Unlike other measures of home prices, there has been no "spring bounce" (so far) when price is measured by square foot. In fact, in contrast to the previous three years, prices have neither bounced nor plateaued. Whether this descent will continue or is merely a lagging indicator remains to be seen.

DataQuick: Sacramento Median Price Up From February

From the Sacramento Bee (updated article):

...[T]he median sales price for new and existing homes combined in Sacramento County rose for the first time in more than a year to $165,000, up $5,000 from February's median.

DataQuick numbers by county here. By zip here.

DataQuick figures for San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced here (updated).

ForeclosureRadar: Sacramento Defaults Hit New High

Calling All First-Time Homebuyers

A reporter from a national newspaper would like to interview first-time homebuyers in our area. If you are interested, please contact me and I will forward your e-mail on to the reporter.