Market Update, July 2007

We’ve all gotten somewhat used to hearing bad news about the market, but this month’s numbers have been typical of what we’ve been seeing for several months.  The failure of so many banks has made it a banner year for horror stories, and we note with some interest that the Bee recently published a story of a real estate broker who went out of business following a heart attack.

Well, yeah, a heart attack will throw you off your game.  Meantime I’ve gone from just me last year to just me and six agents and a transaction coordinator this year.  So people believe what they want to believe. 

With this in mind we take the time-honored (and recently Purva-brown-endorsed) approach of just putting the numbers out there.

The average home in Sacramento County sold for $371,905 in July, down 7.4% from last year’s average of $401,806.  This year’s home was slightly larger, so the net result is that the sold price per square foot dropped 9.5% from July to July, from $242.05 last year to $219.03 this year. The median price dropped 8.3% from July to July, from $360,000 last year to $330,000 this year.

The ratio of expireds to solds has risen somewhat dramatically, even given last year’s starting point of 80.5%.  This year the ratio is 103.7%, meaning slightly more homes expired in July (977) than sold (942).  Actually there were fewer expireds this year, but the large drop in the number of sold units — from 1219 sold in July 2006 to 942 sold in July 2007 pushed the ratio up.

With an average of 1,070 units per month selling over the last year and 11421 active units at last glance at the MLS, inventory is currently at 10.7 months.

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