Aren’t you glad you’re not me? Now may be a good time to thank the deity of your choice that you’re not.  If you were me, then you’d be a veteran of over 200 real estate market updates.  That would be a lot of statistical ink if we were using ink, but as you know, I use electricity.  See?  Being me isn’t that bad!

After 200 market updates, you tend to get a pretty good feel for how the numbers are going to shape up month by month, quarter by quarter.  Yes, there are surprises as to where the trends are going on a six-month or one-year basis, and certain segments of the market behave differently than others, but usually February is not that much different from January. 

It sometimes gets routine enough to be boring, so getting my Elk Grove surprise was entertaining.  I was running the numbers for the first quarter of 2007 in Elk Grove versus the first quarter of 2008.  389 units sold overall in the first quarter of 2007.  I was running the numbers for how many bank foreclosures (REOs) have sold in 2008 and came up with 331.  No, that can’t be right — that has to be the total number.  Thinking I’d made a mistake, I tried it a couple of different times.  No, sure enough, 331 total foreclosure sales, almost as many as last year’s overall total.  Total unit volume this year was 466 units, 19.8% more than last year.  Foreclosures were 71% of the total.  Throw  in short sales, and distressed sales in Elk Grove accounted for 76.8% of all sales. 

Once You Get Past the Surprise, The Rest Is Obvious

Once you three quarters of the sales are either short sales or foreclosures, the declining values in Elk Grove follow as naturally as exhaust fumes follow a diesel engine.  Sold price per square foot fell 32.3% from 2007 to 2008.  The median sale price was $296,000 in Elk Grove in the first quarter, versus $393,000 in the first quarter of 2007, a 24.7% drop.  The average home sold for $313,136 in the first quarter, down 26.1% from 2007′s average of $423,622.

Next time we’ll look at how the Elk Grove active inventory breaks down, comparing the prices and inventory on non-distressed sales, short sales, and foreclosures.

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