Sacramento Real Estate Blog

I n our year in review article for Sacramento County, we talked about East Sacramento, Midtown and Land Park being exceptions to the general cooling-off trend of Sacramento Real Estate. Regular readers will know that I’m pretty bullish (that’s “bullish” — don’t read it fast, and there’s no “T” in it) on East Sacramento, 95819.

Of course, since this year’s home was slightly smaller (1.8%) than last year’s, average price was down slightly. The average price fell 1.7%, from $511,785 in 2006 to $503,142 in 2007. The median sale price fell 2% during that time, from $443,750 in 2006 to $435,000 in 2007.

Adjusted for square footage, however, things looked quite rosy in East Sac, especially comparing it to the whole county. Looking at the year gone by, while other areas in Sacramento lost 11.7% of their value on a sold price per square foot basis, East Sac’s prices held steady, actually gaining .1% on the sold price per square foot indicator ($350.54 per square foot for 2006 versus $350.87 for 2007).

REOs and Short Sales, which make up more than 50% of inventory county-wide, comprise just 16% of active inventory in East Sac. (7.1% REO and 8.9% short sale). Sold foreclosures in 2007 accounted for 3.1% of sales, versus about 20% on a county-wide basis.

Unit volume is down 5.6% from last year, but inventory is hot-buyers-market low at 2.64 months. Days on market are actually from last year by 24%. In 2006 it took 50 days on average to sell a home in East Sac, whereas in 2007 that number was down to only 38 days. The contrast to Sacramento County is clear: In Sacramento County, Average Days on Market rose 56.4%, from 39 in 2006 to 61 in 2007. This year, moreover, fewer listings expired, and the expired to sold ratio dropped even though unit volume was off slightly. Currently the expired to sold ratio is a low 36.1%.

Thumbs up photo by Joe Telling, licensed under Creative Commons.

I always enjoy writing about East Sacramento, because the numbers there are so strong month after month (see for example my earlier East Sacramento market updates).  A true maverick, it’s as though East Sacramento never got the memo about the market being bad, and decided to continue to enjoy a sellers’ market amid the most ursine predictions of doom and gloom.

To be sure, East Sacramento posted a slow November compared to last year.  Unit volume fell 27.3%, from 22 units last year to 16 units this year.  During the same period, however, sold price per square foot rose by 6.5%, from $320.32 last year to $341.15 this year.  In November, the average home sold for $463,625, down .9% from last year’s average of $467,984, while dropping 7% in size from last year.  At $415,000, the median selling price was down 5.5% from last year’s median price in East Sac of $439,000.

Along with increasing price per square foot, East Sacramento continues to enjoy other seller’s market numbers, such as low inventory.  With an average of 22 homes selling each month and 68 units available, inventory in East Sac works out to 3.14 months, well below the traditional six-month line of demarcation between a buyers’ market and a sellers’ market.  The expired to sold ratio, already low last November at 36.4%, fell to a meager 12.5% this November.

The only sprinkle of rain I’ve found on this otherwise sunny parade of good news is that short sales are up to 10.3% of active inventory.  However at a combined total of 13.2% for short sales and REOs, the number of distressed sales in East Sac still pales in comparison to the numbers for Sacramento County as a whole (over 50%).

Unlike the rest of the world, East Sacramento didn’t get the memo from the Sacramento Bee about how awful the real estate market is, and continued to enjoy a strong buyer’s market in October.  Price movement can go either way depending on what indicator you like, while days on market decreased from October to October.  Unit volume is down quite a bit, however, so let’s do the bad news first:  This October twelve units sold in East Sacramento (95819), down 47.8% from last October’s volume of twenty-three units.

October’s average home sold for $522,467, down 10.7% from last year’s average of $584,926.  However, since this year’s home was somewhat smaller than last year’s on average, the sold price per square foot ratio only fell 2.8% during this time.  Meantime, the median price rose 9.3%.  This year the median sale price was $497,500, compared to $455,000 last year.

The big news about East Sac continues to be the low inventory numbers.  There are currently 3.25 months of inventory in East Sacramento.  This is based on an average of twenty-units selling every month over the last year, with seventy-tow units in inventory at present.

East Sacramento is also the land that Notices of Default forgot, with only one bank owned foreclosure in active inventory (1.4%).  None of the homes that sold in October of 2006 or 2007 were bank owned.

This report covers residential real estate sales for East Sacramento (95819).

East Sacramento’s real estate market continues to defy the statistics for the rest of Sacramento County, with strong prices and low inventory. This year’s average home sold for $486,300, 11% more than last year’s average of $438,041. Granted, this year’s home was just over 100 square feet bigger, but even adjusted for square footage, prices rose slightly from August to August. Last August the sold price per square foot was $346.55, while this August that number had risen .4% to $347.85. Only the median price showed any wear and tear, dropping 1.9% from $415,000 to $407,250.

As we reported for July, the numbers for East Sac continue to be strong. For example, in August, where average days on market decreased. This year the average was forty days, 13% lower than last month’s forty-six. Likewise the expired to sold ratio is down this year, from 56.5% to to 26.7%. Inventory is low at 3.63 months, down from 3.91 months last month.

Foreclosures are the exception to the rule in East Sacramento. Of the eighty-four active units in inventory, only 3 of them (3.6%) are bank owned. No bank-owned homes sold in August of this year or last year.

I recently congratulated my friend Susan when she closed escrow on a beautiful home in East Sacramento. At the time I told her about some earlier articles I had written about East Sacramento in general and the fabulous forties in particular, and told her about the sense I had that East Sacramento was a sort of a market anomaly — in a really good way — in that in the midst of falling prices elsewhere in Sacramento county, East Sac was holding its own quite well.

July’s numbers certainly bear this intuitive feeling out in a really big way. East Sac is doing quite well indeed. While the average price of a home in Sacramento County fell 7.4% from July of last year to this July, the average price of a home in East Sac rose an incredible 18.5% during the same period, from $468,094 to $554,571. To be sure, this year’s “average home” was a good deal bigger, but even adjusted for square footage, the sold price per square foot did a little better than staying relatively steady. It actually rose 7/10 of one per cent from July to July (when on larger homes you’d expect it to fall just by virtue of bigger sizes). So while greater Sacramento County’s sold price per square foot fell 9.5%, East Sac’s actually rose slightly.

At the same time, many other market indicators show East Sac going strong. Days on market actually decreased during the period, from 54 days on average last year to 38 days this year. The expired to sold ratio, which stood at a “buyer’s market” 66.8% last July, was down to 17.4% this July. At the same time the ratio rose in the county from 80.5% to 103.7%. Similarly, inventory in East Sac down to 3.91 months, compared to a county-wide average of 10.7 months. While unit volume dropped 47.3% county-wide, it rose 43.8% in East Sac.

So we have:

• Low inventory
• Rising prices
• Falling expireds
• Rising unit sales volume

Hey, I remember something like that. We used to have something like that in 2004 or so. What was it we called it again?

Oh yeah, I remember: Seller’s Market!

Sweet.