The Sacramento Association of Realtors recently released the statistics for the month of August 2011. The full stats can be found here. The summary is below.
- sales increased 8.4% from July
- closed escrows were up 14.4% from this time last year
- The sales break down was as follows: 642 REOs (37.5%), 411 short sales (24%) and 658 conventional sales (38.5%)—
- These numbers have stayed relatively level month to month with REOs down only .2%, short sales up 5.7% and conventional sales down 3.5%.
- Sacramento condominium sales increased for the month to 153 units.
- This figure is up 17.2% from the 130 units sold in July and up 19.5% from the 128 units sold last year.
- The median home sales price remained low, decreasing .6% to $165,000 from the $166,000
- Compared with August 2010 ($186,000), the median sales price is down 11.3%.
These numbers show us that prices are still low. I believe we will still see prices decline in many areas in Sacramento. This is a great time to take advantage of low rates coupled with low prices. Many times a person can buy a home for less or equal to what they are paying in rent. For example a payment on a $200,000 home with 3.5% down ($7,000) is about $1300 at 4.5% interest rate. I am sure we all know of people who are paying a lot more than this in rent. There are many homes available at this price and even lower.
If you know of someone who doesn’t necessarily want to sell but would like to take advantage of the low prices, we can explore the option of renting out their current home. Or many times if they are hoping to sell in the next few years, now may be the best time as we do not anticipate prices getting better any time soon in most areas. The advantage to this is that they would be able to take advantage of the buyer’s market and save money in that respect.
jenica@jenicawilliams.com 916-779-6706
