Let’s Talk About Real Estate in Sacramento County
As I’ve told you guys before Sacramento County runs about 2/3 the size of Placer County as far as houses and things like that. About 3,450 homes are on the market right now. That is a big increase guys. It really is. If you go back over a 15-month period, you’ll see that’s a 70% increase in the number of homes that are on the market. A 70% increase, that’s huge! If you go back over three years, you’ll see it’s even larger. This is a big issue that we’ve been through this before. If you punch back, you’ll see that the inventory was up this high before and then it dropped to nothing where you had no homes in the market every month. The amount of homes that are selling was equaling the amount of homes that are on the market. And then now it’s back up there again. We expect to see that cycles in real estate. We’re coming back into another cycle.
What does that mean for average price per square foot? What does it mean for days on market? Well, right now as you would expect the days on market is climbing up a little bit from three months ago for 35 days on market to 37 days on market to 39 days on market. It’s taking a little bit longer to sell the houses. We expect to see here, we expect to see it climbing so there’s nothing to be alarmed about. But if you’ve got a home in the market and you’re trying to sell it quick, that’s something you better consider. You’re going to have to price yourself aggressively to get that done.
However, we’re not seeing a big drop in prices. We’re holding steady across the board, maybe even rising a little bit, 173, 174, 176 – those are prices per square foot. That is a cost because the inventory that is out there, you know you’re sitting a little bit less in a two and a half month supply, 2.6 months in Sacramento. So, you’re still seeing some tough sells as far as low inventory on the lower end. The lower price range is still holding tight on its inventory. The upper price range probably has a little more flexibility on the price.
That’s that. The spread is pretty tight between asking and getting. When you’re looking at asking and getting spread over the last couple of years, you’re going to see it’s really about as tight as its been in a long time. People are asking on average $368,000 and they’re getting on average $304,000. I know that is a big spread but there a lot of unrealistic sellers out there. I hate to tell you. There are some sellers out there who are just, I don’t know man, what are you thinking? I don’t know about that. Anyway, there are some unrealistic sellers out there and you guys need to get a little closer to where that asking price is 304 versus 368.
Alright, that’s our Sacramento market 2.6 homes a month worth of inventory on the horizon. What do we mean by that? We mean if all the homes sold out, every homes sold out and no new homes came on the market, then we would take 2.6 a month to sell it and that has been down as low as under a month. Typically, we like to see that at six months so it’s still a tight inventory.
In Placer County, 1,466 homes on the market really hasn’t risen much since last month. We’re kind of seeing that that’s just staying at that area. We don’t see much increase in that. The number of homes pending, about the same. Number of homes sold has dropped a little bit. 492 homes sold in the last month in Placer County. Average price per square foot 195, 197 dropped down for some unknown reason. 191 and 196 back up.
You know when you see that drop in there, sometimes it’s just statistics. You could have a lot of lower priced home sale or a lot of higher priced home sales and it will drop that. What you look for is the trend. You look for a trend. Did it go from 195 down to 191 and stayed there or did it go and move back and forth? That’s what we kind of what we want to see. We want to see those trend lines that are going on. We’re at 196 per square foot.
The interesting thing to me is that it’s not really much different. Usually you see a bigger spread between Sacramento and Placer County. We really don’t see that big of a spread between the two.
Days in market in Placer county – 44, 47. It was at 36. So we’re seeing a vast increase in Placer County. What this is reflective of the higher homes are taking longer to sell. So in the last three months, notice that we went from 36 days on market to 44 days on market to 47 days on market. And the big issue there, the reason is that these houses are a lot more expensive. These are higher priced homes. Instead of 368, the asking price on these is 565. 436 is the getting price. This is a big deal, big difference. You got to pay attention. If you’re out there in Placer County your homes are taking much longer to sell and it’s climbing rapidly. We’ve got the slow buying season coming up here so you need to be aware of that. Big difference there.
Let us know in the comments if you see any changes coming up or if I missed something in the update. Also, feel free to share any comments or questions in the section below.
This is such a useful synopsis thanks! You’ll know by now from my previous comments that I’m a total newbie in this world but I’m learning so much and these posts are a great source of info. I’d love to know if you can point me in the direction of somewhere which comprehensibly details the fluctuations you speak of over the last 3 years, thanks!