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Real Estate Construction and Condo Market in Downtown Sacramento
Back side of the Sacramento Kings Arena, the Golden 1 Center, on L Street near 5th.
Lots of people are beginning to bank on property values going up near the new downtown Sacramento Kings Arena, now named the Golden 1 Center, and with good reason. Parts of downtown Sacramento are going through renovation, which often tends to boost values in the neighborhoods near by. And there is a lot to point toward, from the older expansion of the Crocker Museum to the revitalization of K Street and all the construction buzz for boutique hotels, new condos and apartment buildings.
Rents are going up, too. In fact, in some neighborhoods, it is cheaper to buy a home in Sacramento than to rent. The buy-and-hold investors are coming back. There is a big difference between the flipper investors and regular investors. I think it’s funny that we call the flippers “investors” when they are more like gamblers. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose and they never seem to know when to fold. For the long run, investors who buy homes to rent them out look more for value than trying to squeeze every last dime out of a transaction and better fit the term investor.
Construction in progress at Kings Arena, Golden 1 Center, downtown Sacramento on L Street, 9/13/15.
Those thoughts ran through my head yesterday as my husband and I headed to the Sacramento Library on I Street and drove down L Street. I recall several years ago the condos at 15th Street at Stanford Court that used to sell for $150,000 are now moving in the $300,000 range and up. Those condos also rent for $1,500 and up. Some projects have remained fairly stable, like the Saratoga Townhouses over at 9th and Q Streets, but some of the others like Bridgeway Towers, for example, at 500 N Street, why, those prices have jumped through the roof. I’ve had short sales at $250K or so and those prices are almost double in 2015.
We also drove by flippers on 3rd Street in downtown Sacramento and, like the homes going in on 5th Street, the Mill at Broadway in Land Park, some of the reason for that construction is cheap land. Land is usually cheap because it’s either contaminated, like the railroad cleanup in Curtis Park Village, or it’s in a bad location, like under a freeway. I don’t know why people want to live under a freeway but they will, and I’m not talking about the homeless. Why do they want to buy in McKinley Village? I suspect it’s the same reason people will live on busy streets, affordability coupled with a connection to others.
It’s almost like a life-force to some buyers, the screaming freeway. Cars zipping by, a continual traffic hum of automobile tires, accentuated by the occasional compounding of racket made by 16-wheelers and motorcycles. I spotted new homes going in at the corner of Santa Buena and Swanson in Land Park, up against Interstate 5. This was a plot of land that the neighborhood rallied around to make into a dog park, but it never happened. I’ve sold homes on Santa Buena, and it’s one of the hardest places to sell homes in Land Park, except for those on Freeport or by the railroad tracks.
When you run out of land in a city, you get what is left, and the real estate mantra of location, location, location seems to matter less and less to home buyers. Well, until the day they become a home seller.
photos by Elizabeth Weintraub
Think About Selling a Sacramento Home When Buying
One of the biggest fears sellers often harbor about selling a Sacramento home is what if it doesn’t sell? They have those fears because they are not in real estate. When you’re in real estate, like this Sacramento real estate agent, you know that anything will sell if the price is right. Even a flooded-out house with mold the size of basketballs will sell. And yes, I’ve sold a lot of those types of homes, too.
There are a variety of reasons why selling a Sacramento home might take longer than usual to sell, though. These are sometimes the reasons that some sellers don’t want to hear because they are reasons the sellers should have thought of before they bought a home. I often tell people that the time to think about selling a Sacramento home is when you buy a home.
Maybe it’s in a bad location. You know, location, location, location is what drives real estate. Maybe there’s something about it that other homes have and yours does not. I ask buyer’s agents who show my listings to give me buyer feedback. From feedback I hear about things we can rectify. If we can’t rectify those things, we can adjust the price to account for it.
It’s difficult to explain to a seller that she bought the wrong home or paid too much, but I do try to get that point across if it is true. It is often true. Especially in certain neighborhoods in Sacramento, it’s easy to buy the wrong type of home in the wrong location.
Or, we can wait for the buyer who is just like the seller of any other beautiful home in Elk Grove. Because the seller bought this home for a reason. That is most likely the same reason a new buyer will buy it. Nobody is that unique. A buyer will appear, and we will reel ’em in.
There is a buyer for every home in Sacramento. If this agent is listing and selling your home, you can count on it.
When You Think the Location in Sacramento Doesn’t Matter
The seller who made an appointment with me to assess her home and its value canceled last week. She called to say another agent had persuaded her son to list with that agent so she did not need to speak to me. She further elaborated that the agent had greater exposure. Hmm . . . what was the comparison? After all, in 2012, I ranked as the #2 agent at the #1 company in Sacramento. It’s difficult to put a real estate phrase into Google without finding my name. But then I dropped the matter. I did not want to list a house that was slammed up against the freeway all that badly. Not as badly, apparently, as the agent who pushed for the listing and came up with whatever was said.
Nope, I will give it to my sellers straight. I don’t need to fabricate numbers or paint a rosier picture of myself than what exists. You get what you see with this Sacramento real estate agent.
As real estate agents, we can’t always choose which properties we sign on to sell. Well, sure, we sign the listing agreement, and we don’t have to do that. We could turn down the listing, and some agents will turn down certain types of listings. Sometimes, agents won’t take listings under a certain dollar value or in a certain neighborhood, but I don’t discriminate. I will list and sell just about anything that is located anywhere. It’s all real estate. Some sales are just more challenging than others. Sure, I love that beautifully staged home in Granite Bay, but I’ll also list that water-logged, varmint-infested roach motel. I’m flexible — like a round peg in a square hole.
Just this morning, I explained to a seller that he shouldn’t get upset with me because I was not the agent who sold him the house, which is located in about the worst location possible in Sacramento. The only worst kind of location, would be next to garbage dump. Location is everything in real estate.
People forget. They get caught up in the excitement of buying a home and they don’t stop to think about location. The next time location pops into their head is when they are trying to sell. That’s when they realize the home they bought is not in a desirable location. Homes in desirable locations quickly sell. Homes in not so desirable locations take longer to sell and sell for much less than others around them.
The time to think about location is when you buy that home.
