It’s that time again.  The agents and brokers who subscribe to Metrolist have entered  their sales data for the previous month, so we can take that data and mine it to within an inch of its life.

As we often do, let’s start with Sacramento County, which experienced a sharper than usual drop in the sold price per square foot from the month before.  In September, the average sold price per square foot was $130.50, down 7.4% from the August average of $140.87, and 35.2% from a year ago, when the average sold price per square foot was $201.35.  In September, the average home in Sacramento County was 1595 square feet in size, down 6.1% from 1699 on average last year, and sold for $208,212, down 39.2% from last September’s average of 39.2%.  The median sale price in September was $185,800, down 40.6% from last year’s median sale price of $313,000.

With prices down so much, unit volume continues to be high compared to last year.  Indeed, in September we sold 2084 units, up 60 units from August, and more than doubling last year’s pathetic showing of 803 units.  We’ll have some charts appearing soon that show the unit sales and price data back to about 2004.

As usual, the bulk of the demand in September was for distressed properties.  Bank owned foreclosures (also known as "Real Estate Owned" or REOs) accounted for biggest piece of the pie, making up 69.7% of the sales in September.  With banks still slow to approve short sales, however, this category made up the smallest percentage of the sales at 10.5% of the sales in September, even though at present they make up 43.4% of active listings.  Finally, non-distressed sales comprised some 19.9% of the sales in September.

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