August 2018 Sacramento Housing Report

Our August 2018 Sacramento housing report is not a pretty picture, so there is no sugar coating what is happening. Although, I imagine many will try. It’s the nature of real estate agents to put a spin on the facts and make them seem more interesting, enticing and exciting. Some of you might look at this chart and note the pending sales have risen. But does that equate to closed sales? Good question. Probably not.

Looking at my own production, right now I have 6 listings, and four of those listings have already been sold once after the buyers flaked. One listing has been sold 4 times. I am not witnessing dedicated buyers.

The most astounding thing about the August 2018 Sacramento housing report is the uptick in inventory. Fact is our inventory has about doubled since the beginning of the year. We began the year with 1,570 homes for sale in Sacramento County. As of the August 2018 Sacramento housing report, the number of homes for sale has leapfrogged to 3,007.

When people ask me if they should put their home on the market in our fall market or wait until spring, my standard answer for the past 7 years has been wait until spring. However, my gut instincts tell me spring won’t be any better than right now and might not be kind to certain sellers. For all practical purposes, we have fewer than two months of inventory, so that makes it still a seller’s market on paper, but in the real world, it does not feel like a seller’s market.

It feels like a market in slow motion.

Where everybody has dropped acid and speaks very slowly, like changing the RPM from 33-1/3 to 5.

We have a slight uptick in days on market, but our median price at $370K is still strong. So strong that I worry if buyers can still afford to buy a home in Sacramento. Especially in the upper-end price points. Further, everybody seems to expect a “deal” and there are no “deals.” There are only homes you may wish you had bought but didn’t, and then it is too late.