Real Estate in El Dorado County — January Market Update
El Dorado County homeowners may have some cause to lament the loss of their home’s value over the last year, but compared to homeowners in Sacramento County they are sitting pretty. While Sacramento County home prices lost some 27% of their value on a sold price per square foot basis over the last year (see our recent Sacramento Real Estate January Market Update), homes in El Dorado County dropped 11.7% from January to January.
The average home sold in El Dorado County in January for $466,127, 94.8% of it’s list price value of $491,947. In January of 2007, in contrast, the average selling price was $474,378, which was 95.7% of the average list price of $495,479. This year’s average was only down 1.7% from year to year, so most of the drop in sold price per square foot was made up by the fact that this year’s crop of homes was 11.3% larger than last year’s. The median sale price in January fell 5.6% from year to year, from $447,000 to $422,000.
Currently bank foreclosures make up 13.7% of the inventory in El Dorado County, but in January they accounted for 30.7% of the sold homes.
The price discrepancy between bank foreclosures and non-foreclosures (including short sales) is huge. The average bank foreclosure in El Dorado County is currently listed at $180.06 per square foot, while the average non-foreclosure is listed at $262.60. This difference is even more glaring when you consider that the non-REO sample consists of larger homes (which should have a smaller price per square foot value just by virtue of their size). Current “bank repo” opportunities in El Dorado County include some forty-six homes listed below $300,000.
