Email Elizabethexclusive buyers agent Josh Amolsch
Sacramento County Housing Report for January 2020
The Sacramento County Housing Report for January 2020 includes Sacramento County single-family homes. No other criteria are included in this particular report so that we can get a broad understanding of what is happening in our area. If you want to get updates for a specific area, even down to a ZIP code or multiple ZIP codes, or multi-family properties or land, sign up for Sacramento Home Sale Reports by ZIP Code.
One of the most important metrics in the Sacramento County Housing Report for January 2020 is that single-family homes are selling faster. The graph below shows 39 days is the average time on the market. Homes are selling close to the seller’s asking price. The green line below shows homes are selling at 98% of asking price, which is also higher than they were in January 2019. Are you writing offers? Are they in line with what sellers are asking?
The silver lining for buyers is that the median home price for Sacramento County dropped in January 2020 to $375,000. This is a 2.6% drop from December. But, that is still a 6.2% increase from January 2019 as depicted by the blue graph below. If you haven’t found your dream house, you may have an uphill battle, especially in the median price points. Our advice is to hire an exclusive buyer’s agent to help you navigate in this highly competitive seller’s market.
Shop a location you believe will be good for you and your family. Sellers are less likely to do repairs in this market and will be looking for as-is offers. You can earn sweat equity buy fixing up your home slowly over time, within your budget. There are plenty of quality vendors out there looking for work.
The new listings rebounded in January, up a whopping 71.5% from December 2019, but still down 7.6% from January 2019. This brought the total available inventory in Sacramento county to an anemic 1,233 homes, a 1.7% increase from December’s low. Hey, we’ll take what we can get! (See the green graph featured at top of the blog post). If you would like to see a quick but informative guided video presentation of the trends housing report for this month, click here, Video link.
— Written by, Josh Amolsch
If you want an edge in this extremely competitive market, call Wallace & Weintraub Realtors with RE/MAX Gold, at 916-233-6759. We have been helping buyers & sellers for decades
Sacramento County Housing Report for December 2019
The Sacramento County Housing Report for December 2019 comes to us from team member Josh Amolsch. Josh is out there every day in the trenches, working relentlessly. He knows the inventory and how to find the homes his clients dream about. As a well seasoned professional Realtor, Josh knows the market pulse and shares his experience with you in his monthly market trends blog. Enjoy. — JaCi Wallace
The Sacramento County Housing Report for December 2019 includes only Sacramento County single-family homes. No other criteria are included in this particular report. This singular focus of sales gives us a deepened understanding of what is happening in our area. If you want to receive updates for a specific area, a ZIP code, multiple ZIP codes, multi-family properties, and / or land, sign up here for your Sacramento housing report by ZIP code.
We start a new decade in Sacramento County with housing stats that are leaving many prospective homebuyers and sellers to wonder: how to proceed? Is it time to buy, sell, refinance or wait? Before we get into the latest numbers that came out recently, I want you to pinch yourself really hard. Do it because the pain that you will feel is not nearly as bad as the pain that you may feel if you go out to look for a home to purchase this year without a rock-solid game plan. This plan should include hiring an experienced exclusive buyer’s agent to help guide your expectations and align them with reality in a seller’s market.
The top graph shows that the number of homes for sale in Sacramento County fell 30.4% from November 2019 to December 2019. This is down more than 45% from December 2018. Look at the light green column compared to the dark green column right above 12/19 in the graphs above. In the last 5 years, we have not seen those metrics been so close. This is a first in the last 10 years that new listings fell so much lower than the pended sales. Along with inventory being so low, buying activity ticked up 10% from December 2018 to December 2019. The perfect storm is brewing. Sellers can put a home on the market and potentially receive multiple offers with very favorable terms on homes priced to sell.
The average cumulative days on the market jumped up to 38 days in December. This was a 15.6% decline from last year at the same time. What is interesting is the sellers are still receiving 97% of the price they originally listed at, which means sellers at first blush often feel they can get more than market. Lowball and unrealistic offers from uninformed buyers are often ignored. Competition from the influx of buyers from surrounding areas won’t allow a poor strategy to bear fruit. The California Association of Realtor’s report shows that housing affordability in Sacramento has been hovering around 65% since the second quarter of 2015. By comparison, our neighbors in the San Francisco Bay Area are averaging 43% in Q3 2019.
We predict that prices will continue to push forward while interest rates are widely expected to remain muted. If you have been unable to pin down a home in an area that you want to live in, then give us a call. We will give you some ideas you may not have thought about. Our team has been at this for many decades and are eager to help! If you want an edge in this extremely competitive market, call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors, with RE/MAX Gold at 916-233-6759.
Realtor Day Off at A-Bay Waikoloa, Hawaii
What should we do on our Realtor Day Off? Exclusive buyer’s agent Josh Amolsch and his fiancée, Vika, had several choices of things to do yesterday. That was their first full day visiting Adam and Elizabeth Weintraub at their house in Hawaii. With Labor Day approaching, and our fall market about to commence the week after, going to Hawaii sounded like an excellent plan. Choosing an activity was more difficult than putting together our game plan, though.
There are so many things to do on the Big Island. Last year I dragged my husband to my old haunts at The Marriott Waikoloa Beach north of Kona. We figured it was an experience Josh and Vika would appreciate as well.
The first stop was the free parking lot at the Lava Lava Beach Club where we would have lunch. Signs all over said No Beach Parking. People follow signs in Hawaii. OK, clarification: tourists do. This is one of my favorite spots for lunch. Although the menu has changed quite a bit. They used to feature lunch specials with a grilled fish platter, but no more.
When I say it is Realtor Day Off, I mean it was Thursday. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we Sacramento real estate agents take off for the day. But it means we might not be glued to our computer so much, and we try to slip in a little bit of fun. Look at how quiet and calm the view to the south appears. Not a big crowd for a Thursday.
After lunch involving sandwiches, salads, and I was lucky enough to get a Tahitian Limeaid, which was very good, we sauntered down the old ruins path. This is a paved path that leads to ancient ruins, plenty of tropical vegetation and the cats of the Waikoloa Canoe Club at Anaeho’omalu Bay. My favorite one-eyed cat was gone. Looked like a new litter.
We ended up at the beach in front of the Marriott. All beaches in Hawaii are public. These guys in front of us were fishing for halalu. These are juvenile akule or bigeye. At first I thought maybe they were catching the fish for bait but no. It was dinner. To feed their family. Fry up with a little oil, the guy said. And man, were they hauling them in. Hundreds. July and August are popular months to catch these little fish.
On our way back to Kona, I asked Adam to keep an eye out for traffic on the side of the road near the 82nd marker on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway. A few days back, I read in West Hawaii Today that tourists were stopping along the highway to observe a lava tube there. A million times I’ve driven that stretch and not noticed. WHT reported that some people crossed the highway by wandering into on-going traffic while looking at their phones.
The lava tube was created by the 1801 Huehue lava flow from Hualalai. Here I am crouching down while Adam shoots the tube. Can’t wait to see what we come up with to do today since Realtor Day Off is over.
Exclusive Buyer’s Agent Josh Amolsch Arrives in Kona!
We’re so excited that our exclusive buyer’s agent Josh Amolsch arrived in Kona yesterday with the beautiful Vika! This is the first time that my husband and I have had the opportunity to welcome guests during our stay at our house in Hawaii. We tell all of our friends that they can come to visit us anytime but so far nobody has taken us up on that offer.
Of course, I have gone to Hawaii with exclusive buyer’s agent Barbara Dow in the past, but that was before we bought our house. Being with Barbara in Maui was a blast. One summer, Barbara and I spent 10 glorious days on the top floor of the Fairmont in Wailea on the lovely island of Maui. I will always treasure those memories and photos. See, the thing about the Elizabeth Weintraub Team is everybody is like family to me. We are not just real estate agents in Sacramento. We share common values and believe in always, without fail, doing the right thing.
For the clients who have been fortunate to work with our exclusive buyer’s agent Josh Amolsch, well, I hear over and over how grateful they felt working with Josh. He always goes that extra step. Each client is unique and special. Plus, Josh has an abundance of compassion for our clients. He loves to receive 5-star reviews from his buyers and works tirelessly toward that goal.
Sure, he might be a punk rock star at times, playing lead guitar at clubs about town in his spare time, but his heart is in real estate. Doesn’t matter if he’s selling million-dollar homes in El Dorado Hills or an investment property in Oak Park, I never tire of listening to his successes. His eyes light up when he talks about how much money he saved his buyers. He prides himself on his ability to negotiate, and we often discuss strategies together. He soaks up knowledge like a sponge.
If you’re looking for exclusive buyer’s agent Josh Amolsch and wondering why he doesn’t answer his phone at 8 AM, it’s because Hawaii does not adhere to daylight saving. We are three hours behind California. We are still working through the Labor Day weekend, even though we are all in Kona. More adventures are sure to follow.
