Condos - First to Fall and Last To Rise?
Traditional real estate wisdom (or possibly, “myth”) has it that condos are the first properties to fall when the market turns down, and the last to rise when the market turns up. I’m not sure about that, but I thought it would be interesting to take a brief look at how condos are doing compared to single family homes in the recent unit volume recovery we’ve been seeing.
In case you came in late and haven’t had a chance to yell at me for saying this yet, for the last five months in a row, unit sales have been higher in Sacramento County than the month before and higher than the previous year. In June, for example, 2022 homes sold county wide, up 86.2% from last year.
Of all the “property subtypes” (as they’re called), single family homes is the one that has experienced the most growth, with unit sales increasing 92.4% in that category from June to June. By comparison, Year on Year increase for sales of condos has been sluggish, at only 28.91%. This June 107 condos sold, versus 83 last June.
Another way to say this is that as prices fall, sales of all categories of homes have increased to some extent, except those categories that are so small that it’s impossible to get statistically significant results. But the big winner in the unit sales recovery of 2007-2008 has been single family homes.
