Well, it’s that time of the month again, when all the real estate bloggers race to publish the latest real estate statistics based on what happened last month. The October numbers are still trickling in, so I’ll publish a full market report in a day or two, but meantime I thought I’d whet your appetite with a chart.
This one shows median prices for residential real estate in Sacramento County, according to MLS data.
(Chart the chart for a larger version).
Like the general residential market that is a part of, the market for Sacramento County Condos fell off sharply in September. The median price for a condo sold in September was $195,00, down 18.6% from last year’s median price of $239,595. The average sold price per square foot showed a similar drop of 18.3%, from $220.46 per square foot last year to $180.15 per square foot this year. The actual average was down somewhat less, since this year’s average condo was slightly larger than last. As a result, this year’s average price of $219,964 was a drop of “only” 14.9% from last September’s average of $258,597.
While the actual number of expired listings only rose 5.3%, a sharp drop in the number of sold units pushed the expired to sold ratio up dramatically. As we saw earlier, the number of overall residential sold dropped 41.3% from September to September. Condo sales lost somewhat less ground, but still dropped a sizeable 34.9%, from 86 units last September to 56 units this September. The expired to sold ratio for both months was 110.5% last September versus 178.6% this September.
Bank owned condos are selling slightly less well than their single family counterparts. Typically for single family homes, we see bank owned properties outselling other properties by about 2 to 1 (based on the percentage of bank owned properties in sales versus actives). In condos, the numbers are about dead even. In September, 17.9% of the sales (ten out of fifty-six) were condos. In active inventory, 17.4% of condos are bank owned.
Even with that in mind, however, September’s average condo buyer negotiated a fairly sizeable 7.6% discount from list price. For homes that sold, the average list price was $238,130, while the average sale price of a Sacramento County Condos as we mention above was $219,964.
