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.