I usually like to check in with my favorite seller’s market, East Sacramento, whenever I need cheering up. Lucky for me I wasn’t starting from a really depressive base line this time, because the usual jolt of happiness I get from East Sacramento is mostly missing from this month’s numbers.

For most of the past several months, our reports about East Sacramento have shown prices holding very steady. This month turned out to be the exception that “proved” (i.e., in the original sense, “tested”) the rule, because February’s numbers saw a dramatic un-East-Sacramento-like dip.

This year the average home sold in East Sacramento for $459,127, down 22.3% from last year’s average of $591,145. The median price fell a less dramatic 5.8%, from $433,450 last February to $408,200. Meantime sold price per square foot dropped 16.8% from February to February, from $388.15 on average last year to $322.87 on average this year.

Unit volume was also down this February, from twenty units last year to thirteen this year. This number of thirteen was also well below the average monthly sales volume for the past year, which was twenty units per month.

Even though February was not a good month for the thesis of an East Sacramento seller’s market, there were a couple of areas where East Sacramento’s numbers still showed strong. First, compared to almost anywhere else in the region, inventory is still extremely low in East Sac at only 2.94 months. Secondly, the average days on market decreased from year to year, from 35 last year to 25 this year.

As we saw last time, overall East Sac put in a performance of about $350.00 per square foot for the last two years. So what we’re seeing in these numbers are unusually high numbers for last February, and unusually low numbers for this February. Of course with small sample sizes like East Sac such fluctuations are commonplace. What remains to be seen is the extent to which East Sac can recover from this month of poor comps.

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