Placer County Real Estate Market

Posted by John Lockwood on January 16th, 2007

It’s been awhile since I’ve grappled with any general numbers for Placer County, other than posting the monthly market updates on my Roseville site. I probably should do more, now that I have a couple of clients who are actively looking in Roseville, but there’s so much of Sacramento for me to keep up on and stay competitive in, and meanwhile if I do have any spare verbiage time there’s the new blog in El Dorado and Amador that could use the occasional push.

Partly it’s knowing that Placer county has taken something of a beating in the numbers. Whether this is because it was too high to start with, as I recently opined for Land Park, or just what’s going on is tough to say. (I should try factoring out Lincoln one of these days — I suspect there’s major devaluation going on there, but at present that’s just a guess. Next post, maybe).

So it’s hard to write about Placer County because quite frankly I fear the bubble bloggers might smell my fear and bite me, and then at the end of this movie I’ll have to kill the head bubble blogger or else I’ll be chasing people and eating them all day long.

Oh, wait, that was “Dawn of the Dead”, wasn’t it?

OK, Placer County. Prices are down a lot. Inventory is higher than Sacramento or El Dorado, but not all that bad. Unit volume is quite strong compared to last year, only off by 7.8%. The expired to sold ratio is a whopping 120.1%. Bummer.

That was the minimalist version. OK, you bubble zombies, come and get me!

The average sale price for residential properties in Placer County is down 8.6% from last year (hey, that’s single digits — take that you varmints…), from $513,447 in December of ‘05 to $469,264 in December of ‘06. The median price dropped 7.6%, from $460,000 to $425,000.

I should check out Lincoln, but Lincoln is especially unsettling. I suspect there are bubble bloggers sleeping out there in some of the vacant mansions owned by bay area speculators. I don’t even go to Lincoln any more unless someone pays for my garlic and silver bullets, and even then, I only go in the morning if I have plenty of gas.