Sacramento County Market Update October

This is a market update for single family residences only. If you want to see a market update for condos in Sacramento county, please check back tomorrow.

First, the Stats

Median price for sold single family residences was slightly higher than last month's median at $192,000. This October, we saw the median price at $195,000. 1992 houses sold this month, again similar numbers to September. The disconnect between pending and sold homes month after month continues. While September's pending sales were at 3729, we only saw 1994 close escrow. If this trend continues, November will probably be a pretty lackadaisical month. Pendings in October are at 2054. Inventory is at 3.8 months again almost the same as last month.

Then the Opinion

On another note, I have been seeing more short sales sell. No telling when they went pending, however. I am also noticing the inventory of bank owned homes shrink to just 2 months or so. Based on these facts and other numbers I've been seeing, I think we could go two ways:

On the one hand, we seem to be bouncing around the bottom of the market. Many bank owned homes that sit on the market currently are not great deals without having to add quite a bit of sweat equity and are not potential homes to most buyers. These homes might get picked up or might continue to sit on the market with homebuyers migrating to other houses in better shape. Homes in better shape command more in price and so we might see a resurgence in home values by next fall.

On the other hand, there is a slight glitch. And this comes from the short sales. In the past, we have seen short sales completely mess up the numbers for everyone. Listing agents are not told the price at which they will sell by the bank upfront and that causes them to take a long time to sell or they sit in contingent (pending) status forever. Approvals take anywhere from weeks to months. These short sales could potentially become foreclosures. If that happens, the market might take longer to recover until all the inventory is absorbed by buyers.

So unfortunately, it comes down to what lenders might do. If they accept short sales now and get them sold, the market recovers faster. If not, we might have to wait awhile. The buyers are here. Now it's up to the sellers.