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April 2020 Housing Statistics for Sacramento County
April 2020 Housing Statistics for Sacramento County shows the trends are mighty clear, says Josh Amolsch. This is an exciting blog post from Josh, enjoy his read below. –JaCi Wallace
We are in a completely different place right now than we were at this point last year. Do you all remember the glorious days of April 2019 when Sacramento County single-family home inventory was 26% higher? When the median home price was $15K less than it was last month? I sure do remember, and all my wonderful buyer clients do, too.
Sellers in April 2020 were enjoying getting 100% of getting their asking price. However, if they are buying replacement property, they are staring down the barrel of having to be in the buyer’s shoes as they move on to their replacement home purchase. With homes selling in 20 days in April 2020, which by the way is 43% faster than March 2020, you pretty much may have to take what you can get in this market.
I actually talked to a new potential buyer client today about the market. I had to show him the reality that his idea of getting a beautiful home in Stonelake, Elk Grove, wasn’t going to work. He wanted to offer $70,000 under asking price, and this is a dream that he needs to wake up from. He cited a Covid19 previous report about patience and Covid19; his take was a market price-drop. His assumption was that people suddenly want to give their homes away. Nope. Kinda need a shelter to shelter-in-place.
Some of you may have seen my teaser post on social media about the “Cumulative Days On Market,” reaching 20 days for April 2020. Well, here it is in all of its shocking glory. It is taking twenty (20) days on average for single-family homes to sell as of April 2020. We have not seen homes selling this quickly in Sacramento since July 2017, when we hit 19 days. That appears as a hot summer market in Sacramento’s real estate, even with a global pandemic.
Think about this, going back as far as Trendgraphix allows, I did not find a time when homes were selling this quickly. So, if you are putting your home on the market, start packing and writing offers on replacement homes, because if this trend continues, you will be loading up that UHAUL before you can get to Costo to load up on apocalypse amounts of toilet paper.
The good news with the April 2020 housing statistics for Sacramento County show a positive change. Although we are down from April 2019 in inventory, sales, pending, and new listings, the inventory is up 15.5% in April 2020 over March 2020. The pendings are also up 4.3%. The uptick in new listings in March gave us more inventory in April, and buyers got back to writing offers. With this step forward, the median home price stayed strong at $400K for the second month in a row.
Another metric I am seeing is real-time stats comparing 4.1.2020 – 4.7.2020 vs. 5.1.2020 – 5.7.2020. We are already seeing 59% more pendings and 4% more new listings. Due to low inventory, sales are down 40%, but inventory is increasing by 14.7%. I predict we will continue to see a tight market, increased median home prices, homes selling quickly and, for most, if not more than what sellers are asking. Mortgage Rates Daily shows rates at 3.25% today, and these historically low rates are largely expected to keep driving the market.
Hang in there. Weintraub & Wallace Realtors with RE/MAX Gold is well-versed in competitive markets and can help you whether you are buying or selling. Give us a call, text, or email anytime. We can be reached at 916-233-6759.
— Josh Amolsch
Do You Have to Tell a Sacramento Real Estate Agent She’s Not Hired?
This Sacramento real estate agent focuses on her own business. I don’t spend time worrying about my competitors in Sacramento (i.e. other real estate agents) because they’re gonna do whatever they’re gonna do, and whatever that may be doesn’t really concern me. So, sometimes, it’s a bit astonishing if a seller tells me that I have a won a competing situation in which I did not know I was actively competing. It’s not really any of my business if a seller is talking to other real estate agents before they hire me, just as long as the seller hires me. I usually don’t even ask.
When a seller calls to discuss selling her home or wants me to pop by for an estimate of value, I presume the seller is interested in selling her home. Hey, guess what? I’m in the business of selling homes. How lucky is that? I go over, help sellers figure out what price to list at, and then I list the home for sale, bring an offer, and I sell it. Last month I had a very upset agent call and ask why I listed a home she had worked on for half a year. Well, first, the seller didn’t tell me anything about that and, second, that’s what I do for a living. Maybe the seller thought it was OK to call a bunch of agents and pick the agent’s brains or that no agent would want to list the seller’s home, but that would mean the guy was insane.
If a seller calls this real estate agent and is planning to sell, it’s my job to do it. When one of my sellers from last week called to say she was ready for me to put her home on the market, she mentioned that she had specifically chosen me among several other agents in Sacramento County and Placer County. She wanted to know what she should say to the agents she did not hire. How should she break the news to them that she hired a different Sacramento real estate agent or should she break the news at all?
Yes, I believe so. I let her know that the professional way for an agent to respond when informed that the seller selected somebody else is for the agent to say, “Thank you for telling me; you have chosen a good agent.” Because that’s what I would say if the tables were reversed. Doesn’t mean I would be happy about it, but I’d accept it because what else can you do? Being in sales means sometimes you’re rejected. Sellers have all kinds of reasons why they choose an agent.
