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27 Dec

Sacramento Condo Market November 2005

Posted December 27th, 2005 | View Comments

As we’ve seen in all segments of the market, sales are down somewhat from last year, with more listings expired unsold. Condo sales are no exception to this general rule.

Condo owners saw their property values increase by 15.1% from November to November. However, since this year’s average condo was larger than last year, on a price-per-square-foot basis the appreciation was somewhat lower, at 12.2%. The average condo in Sacramento County that sold through the MLS in November listed for $264,007, and sold for 98.9% of the list price, for an average sale price of $261,088. The median sale price was $255,000.

This November’s expired to sold ratio is up, to 60.4%, compared to only 13.1% as for November of 2004. Days on market are up from an average of 27 days last year to 43 days this year. Unit sales for November were 111 units, down from last year’s 137, and inventory currently stands at 4.8 months.

  • Elliott

    I’m an invester looking to possibly add condos to my real estate investment strategy. I’d like to know how the condo market has fared in Sacramento and its surrounding areas in the past 15 or so years. Is there a website where I could find that data? Does the combination of newer area and/or newly constructed condo complexes result in higher appreciation rates? I know it is impossible to predict the future, but I’d like to get a sense of how this particular housing market has fared. Thanks…great site!

  • John Lockwood

    Elliott,

    Sorry about the delay in responding. Thanks for the comment. I don’t know of a web site that goes back that far, but you might try SacBee.com or searching on Google for Dataquick. Probably you could get that information from a title company, but I can tell you that over the course of fifteen years, the appreciation has been tremendous. My own single family home has gone up in value from $145,000 to approximately $430,000 in the less than 10 years I’ve owned it, and what I’ve found recently is that homes at the lower end of the price spectrum have appreciated faster than homes higher up in price.

    One data point for you — I worked today on a condo for a buyer, listed at $145,000, with identical competing units in better condition at $165,000. The seller bought this property in March of 2003 for $90,000. Granted this was at a peak market time, but it gives you an idea.

    Do newer condos appreciate faster? It may be. Most of what my market studies have shown is that “cheaper” has a better trajectory, and this makes sense if you just think about the size of the buyer pool bidding it up. So that would very much include condos at the low end of the price range. Yeah, I know there’s a lot of buzz around new developments downtown like Aura and Sactowers — there was a lot of buzz around Serrano three years ago, but I’d rather have money in Citrus Heights.

    Also, if it were me investing, I’d be more concerned with how much cash flow I could get / how little I could be upside down. Appreciation is only one piece of the puzzle. Also important are depreciation (for tax purposes), and income. If one investment nets me $50 per month and appreciates 5% per year, is that better or worse than an investment that appreciates 10% per year but costs me $350 per month, meanwhile tying up a bigger down payment?

    Anyway, thanks for a good question. If you’re able to find long range market data available, I’d be interested in what you find. Our MLS system wiped out our historical data a little over a year ago, so my own ability to look backward is somewhat limited.

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