Timing the Sacramento Real Estate Market

A seller in Elk Grove just pocketed an additional $75,000, due to timing the Sacramento real estate market. It’s not that I recommend trying to time the market, because it’s almost impossible to do. But you can get lucky. It’s a roll of the dice. Just look at Donald Trump — oh, my poor eyes — because he doesn’t always accurately predict much of anything.

We put this home in Elk Grove on the market in the spring of 2012. I sell an awful lot of homes in this particular part of Elk Grove. This home is located in the highly desirable area of the Machado Dairy subdivision over by Bruceville and Bilby, close to Machado Dairy Park. Buyers like this neighborhood for the schools; the homes are somewhat newer with mature trees. It’s bordered by farm land, which makes you feel like you’re out in the country with all of this open space.

There are so many upgrades in this home. People wonder why a home next door with the same square footage sells for so much less, and it’s upgrades. Ask a short sale seller about upgrades. They will tell you about the cost of every single upgrade down to the penny. But this home was not a short sale, it was a regular equity sale. When we came on the market, many of the homes around it were short sales but even so, we sold at the highest price possible — at a price that barely squeaked through an appraisal because there were no comps in that immediate neighborhood.

The buyer could not close. She could not close because she could not get her tax returns verified because she filed her taxes late. The government was running behind. When the buyer’s escrow extension expired, the sellers canceled the transaction and decided to wait. That was a smart move.

Now, a year later, because the market had gone up, I wrote to the sellers to suggest that they sell their home in Elk Grove at this time. Still, there were almost no comparable sales to justify her sales price, but we sold at the top of the market. The sellers made an additional $75,000 by timing the sale.