El Dorado Hills real estate sales in July were down from last year. That’s no surprise to anyone who’s picked up a Sacramento Bee or been reading along here. Indeed, it should be no surprise to anyone not living on Tralfamador.

On the bad news side, expired listings rose from 14 to 41, while the expired to sold ratio went from 19.4% to 78.8%. (A 100% ratio means as many listings are expiring every month as selling. Recall that a real estate broker’s listings have to have a definite expiration date). At the same time, unit volume is down, from 72 units to 52. (This number is a 27.8% drop, which actually belongs in the “good news” column since we’ve seen these numbers drop as much as 50% or more).

Inventory is up — yes, we have a bad news column entry here for sure. 9.9 months is where it currently stands, with 514 units actively for sale and 52 units having been sold last month. The average home in El Dorado Hills has been on the market seventy-seven days.

So far, however, we’ve yet to see the huge price drops that many of the buyers I talk to have been waiting for. To be sure, the median price dropped 7.3% from last year to this, and the average is down 7.0%. But with interest rates squeezing buyers somewhat, we’re seeing a typical phenomenon at the same time: buyers are going smaller in their home purchase. This July’s sold crop of El Dorado Hills averaged 2804 square feet, down 5.8% from last year. With this factored into the mix, the average sold price per square foot works out to be only a 1.3% drop from last year ($254.57 versus $251.38).

In our next installment, after we’ve gone out to the car to grab our loan calculator, we’ll look at how a hypothetical buyer would make out on a 30-year fixed loan closed at the end of either month, so we can see how interest rates have affected the picture.

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