Area new home sales were off sharply in the last quarter of 2005, the Sacramento Business Journal recently reported. According to the business journal, builders sold 56.7 fewer units in the fourth quarter of 2005 as they had a year earlier. (Full article).

Not to be outdone, I thought I’d run some numbers for resale home sales during the same period, first for Sacramento County and then also factoring in El Dorado County. Either way you figured it, resale home sales were down 25.5% in the fourth quarter of 2005 compared to the fourth quarter of 2004.

The Business Journal hinted at rising material costs pushing prices too high as one factor among many, and it may be that that’s likely to affect newer homes more. I suspect that much of the discrepancy comes from homes on the higher end of the price spectrum, and indeed, the Business Journal notes that the worst numbers in terms of declining new home sales are in El Dorado County, where some of the new homes are pretty spectacular, and priced accordingly.

I knew if Serrano kept building they’d eventually hit a wall and run out of rich golfers. I mean, how many rich golfers can there be?

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