Sacramento Real Estate Blog

Looking at the Land Park, South Land Park and Greenhaven areas of Sacramento (zip codes 95818 and 95822), these areas saw a sharp decline in price from December to December. Let’s look at the numbers first before we indulge in some wild-brain punditry. The average price per square foot dropped 9.0% from December to December in these areas, from $278.84 in December of 2005 to $253.63 in December of 2006. Since this year’s home was slightly smaller on average, the actual averages look even larger. Average list price in December, 2005 was $390,650 versus $351,021 in December 2006, a 10.1% drop.

Your tongue twister for the day: “Bubble bloggers bemoan double digit drops.”

At the same time, the median price in Land Park / Greenhaven was off by 7.5%, from $352,250 in December of 2005 to $326,000 in December 2006.

Unit volume is down somewhat less dramatically, 21.2%, from 66 sold units last December to 52 sold units this December. The expired to sold ratio made it into what we consider “seller’s market” territory this year, moving from 36.4% last December to 76.9% this December.

The last time I was working in Land Park, I was pretty struck by the size of the drop, which seemed to me to be bigger than in other areas. However, I wouldn’t want you to conclude from that opinion and the numbers above that Land Park is not a desirable area. Quite the contrary. I think what happened in Land Park is that, when the feeding frenzy of 2002-2004 took place, Land Park numbers shot up even higher than the surrounding areas. I recall at the time being in a sort of awe at how much Land Park sellers were getting for their homes. Now that the numbers are on their way down, of course, especially overvalued areas like Land Park have further to fall.

Of course, to be honest, this doesn’t fully explain what I’ve seen downtown, and it certainly doesn’t explain why the real bargain basement areas also shot up so dramatically. Anyone who’s honest usually has to end up admitting that there’s more in the complex ebb and flow of the local numbers than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Were it not for Shakespeare, how would anyone ever write their way out of an article?