Sacramento Real Estate Blog

Market Update, July 2007

We’ve all gotten somewhat used to hearing bad news about the market, but this month’s numbers have been typical of what we’ve been seeing for several months.  The failure of so many banks has made it a banner year for horror stories, and we note with some interest that the Bee recently published a story of a real estate broker who went out of business following a heart attack.

Well, yeah, a heart attack will throw you off your game.  Meantime I’ve gone from just me last year to just me and six agents and a transaction coordinator this year.  So people believe what they want to believe. 

With this in mind we take the time-honored (and recently Purva-brown-endorsed) approach of just putting the numbers out there.

The average home in Sacramento County sold for $371,905 in July, down 7.4% from last year’s average of $401,806.  This year’s home was slightly larger, so the net result is that the sold price per square foot dropped 9.5% from July to July, from $242.05 last year to $219.03 this year. The median price dropped 8.3% from July to July, from $360,000 last year to $330,000 this year.

The ratio of expireds to solds has risen somewhat dramatically, even given last year’s starting point of 80.5%.  This year the ratio is 103.7%, meaning slightly more homes expired in July (977) than sold (942).  Actually there were fewer expireds this year, but the large drop in the number of sold units — from 1219 sold in July 2006 to 942 sold in July 2007 pushed the ratio up.

With an average of 1,070 units per month selling over the last year and 11421 active units at last glance at the MLS, inventory is currently at 10.7 months.

I recently announced plans to create a web site where Realtors® could post their listings for free.  Although the development is strictly preliminary, I have posted a development blog so those of you who want to be first on your block can get a feel for what’s going on.

Are we having fun yet?

I spent most of Saturday getting annoyed at what should have been some pretty simple code for the real estate listing project, so I thought I’d take a break and post some more fun stuff.

• For those of you who liked Mr. Science like I do, you’re sure to love Robert Krampf’s Science Videos.  I especially enjoyed walking through an index card, which, if you’d asked me, I would have guessed was impossible.
• Feeling sarcastic, and wondering how you’re going to integrate that into your sense that you’re an advanced meditation practitioner?  No worries!  Zen Sarcasm has your answers.  #1 is #1 in my book for a reason!
• My real estate listing project probably just needs some intelligent marketing support.
• Yes, it’s an oldie, but it’s still a goodie:  The Cartoon Laws of Physics.

In July 2007, according to MLS Data (Metrolist), the average Placer County home sold for $509,477, down 2.6% from last year’s average of $523,109.  For this slightly lower price, however, this year’s buyer walked away with a home that was six percent larger (at 2237 square feet) than last year’s (at 2111 square feet).  The upshot in terms of sold price per square foot was a drop of 8.1%. 

July’s median home sale price in Placer County was $430,000, down 9.9% from last year’s median sale price of $477,500.

The expired to sold ratio rose slightly, but was firmly in buyer’s market territory both last year and this year.   Last year’s expired to sold ratio was 74.7%, and this year’s ratio was 79.6%.  Average days on market are up 18.2%, from 55 days last year to 65 days this year.  Unit volume is down only marginally, 8.6%, from 371 units last year to 339 units this year.

Currently there are 9.5 months of inventory in Placer County.

I recently posed the question about whether the real estate industry needs another social networking web site, and got only one yes vote, from a colleague in Albuquerque.

I can understand the concern.  On some level I agree with those who said we really don’t need such a site. 

First of all, how many blogs can you have?  I try to make a consistent and meaningful contribution to this one, but I have three or four others that I’m either a main author or co-author on, and really one is plenty.

Secondly, I’m sure that from the point of view of someone with forty or eighty posts invested in ActiveRain, thinking that some other site will start to get well positioned for real estate topics is not a great prospect.

Now having said all that, I’m still itching to do some development on the State of California or National level, and so what I envision putting together is a site where each user will get a blog when they sign up that they can use, but which will be centered around a national database of real estate listings (similar to Point2NLS or ZMls).

Assuming this itch continues, the roll-out order will look something like:

Phase I (Alpha Release — Early Adopters)

• Set up the blogging software, and the author’s blog.
• Site design outline — show where the pieces will go.
• Make blogs available to early adopters.  (Email if interested).  

Phase II (Implement Listing Display and Search - Full Release)

• Implement the listing entry and display.
• Implement listing search.
• Improve the user profile page.

Phase III (Enhancements)

• Bug fixes and incremental improvements.
• Integrate sponsored IHomefinder-integrated search on back end.  ($)
• Integrate vFlyer support.
• Make it profitable in other ways, while retaining user base by hanging onto basic:

• Free blogs
• Free user profiles
• Free listings

Writing a National MLS.  How hard can it be? 

I’ve been digging a lot into real estate social networks recently, and also looking into open source software to run such a network.

There are already several such networks making their way in the world.  ActiveRain is probably the most popular, but other sites that have beaten the one I haven’t done yet through the gate include RealEstateWebmasters (which didn’t really start out as a social network, but has started to grow in that direction) and WannaNetwork.

Wannanetwork (which I just joined this morning by way of testing) is especially interesting to me given that it’s:

• Running on one of the open source platforms I’m looking into (Drupal).
• Run by a Realtor®, and one who seems to be getting some benefit out of doing so.

Today I started trying to get my head around the software, but I don’t have too much to show for it yet.

I’ll let you know if I start to sense something more than just a bad case of projectitis and something starts looking deliverable.

Meantime I’m very curious to hear from those of you who are active on ActiveRain, etc. as to what you’d like to see in a real estate social network, what features are your favorites on existing networks, what your experiences have been, etc.

A listing that we just entered into VFlyer / Craigslist, etc. is Vicki Agregado’s beautiful townhome listing in Citrus Heights. I visited this listing with Vicki awhile ago and I was especially struck by what a nice setting it, on a shady cul de sac in front and with a large greenbelt in the back.  Check this one out.