I recently congratulated my friend Susan when she closed escrow on a beautiful home in East Sacramento. At the time I told her about some earlier articles I had written about East Sacramento in general and the fabulous forties in particular, and told her about the sense I had that East Sacramento was a sort of a market anomaly — in a really good way — in that in the midst of falling prices elsewhere in Sacramento county, East Sac was holding its own quite well.

July’s numbers certainly bear this intuitive feeling out in a really big way. East Sac is doing quite well indeed. While the average price of a home in Sacramento County fell 7.4% from July of last year to this July, the average price of a home in East Sac rose an incredible 18.5% during the same period, from $468,094 to $554,571. To be sure, this year’s “average home” was a good deal bigger, but even adjusted for square footage, the sold price per square foot did a little better than staying relatively steady. It actually rose 7/10 of one per cent from July to July (when on larger homes you’d expect it to fall just by virtue of bigger sizes). So while greater Sacramento County’s sold price per square foot fell 9.5%, East Sac’s actually rose slightly.

At the same time, many other market indicators show East Sac going strong. Days on market actually decreased during the period, from 54 days on average last year to 38 days this year. The expired to sold ratio, which stood at a “buyer’s market” 66.8% last July, was down to 17.4% this July. At the same time the ratio rose in the county from 80.5% to 103.7%. Similarly, inventory in East Sac down to 3.91 months, compared to a county-wide average of 10.7 months. While unit volume dropped 47.3% county-wide, it rose 43.8% in East Sac.

So we have:

• Low inventory
• Rising prices
• Falling expireds
• Rising unit sales volume

Hey, I remember something like that. We used to have something like that in 2004 or so. What was it we called it again?

Oh yeah, I remember: Seller’s Market!

Sweet.

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