Tag: Real Estate

The most-commented stories on SacBee.com always seem to be about the Sacramento housing market. Yesterday’s piece is no exception. with people arguing in the comments section that the market is a) vastly overpirced, with up to a 50 percent price reduction on the horizon; b) in stagnation, with no price increases in the future, but no “crash”; or c) just taking a breather.
Continue reading “Slow-down, crash or soft landing?”

Sacramento got some bad news recently thanks to bankrate.com (and frequent Sac Rag reader/commenter adamant.) Our fair city ranked #2 (woohoo!) on their “10 bubble busters — values expected to decline” (no woohoo!) list.

Sacramento, Calif. We’re not quite sure what Sacramento ever did to anyone, but it showed up on just about everyone’s list of has-been markets. Winzer’s Local Home Value Ratings rates the market as 59 percent overvalued and Burns Housing Cycle Barometer also lists it as overpriced.

“Sacramento, we think, has topped out,” says Gollis of The Concord Group. “There is just so much (housing construction) in the pipeline. It’s a steady-as-she goes market and has always had consistent growth, but we think the land market has gotten ahead of itself.”

While I see their point I do wonder if the City of Sacramento is being thrown out with the bath water here.
Continue reading “What happens in Boise…”

Those of us obsessed with house prices and the like will enjoy Zillow.com, a newly launched, very cool Web 2.0-ish home valuation and data site.

The Associated Press reports that Sacramento County lenders filed 321 notices of default in December, the highest number in nearly three years.

More homeowners are having trouble making mortgage payments on homes they bought during the Sacramento region’s housing boom, which has cooled over the past several months.

Ruh, roh. Didn’t see this one coming now did ya?

Not sure how this relates to the housing market debate we’ve been having here recently, but my guess is that more people are being forced to sell their homes to escape foreclosure thus creating more supply than there is demand in the housing market? So maybe I do know how this relates to the housing market debate afterall. I just figured that more people were selling their homes to “cash out” on the housing boom when it appears some are selling for other reasons.

More homebuyers could be in for a shock over the next two years as their low introductory interest rates expire or their interest-only payments end. Adding to the problem, some borrowers hurt their credit score or took out loans, eating up what little home equity they built up.

Didn’t 5 years seem like SO far away?

Shock! Horror! Front page news that the housing market is in poor shape!!

When the market picks up, [the guy in the story will] consider selling again.

When will that be? That’s what everyone is trying to figure out.

Well, let’s see. Examining the graph at right, and I know I’m no economic genius, but I put the Rag’s crack research staff to the test and they told me that they estimated the housing market will pick up (in terms of the time houses are staying on the market) somewhere between February and May, like it does every single year. I’m so sick of the worked-up negative real estate news. I know the market is fluctuating, but come on, some level headedness is called for.

New home sales in the Greater Sacramento region were down almost 57% in the last fiscal quarter of zzzzzzzzzzz. But the news is somewhat mitigated by the detail that new home sales were down only 18% for all of 2005.

When John linked earlier today to the Sacramento Real Estate Blog I was confused, because when I ran across(t) that site a few months ago I assumed it was a real estate business pretending to be a blog. But now I see it’s got actual blogging going on, and a link to us truly, so check it out.

Amanda from My Urban Vista beat me to the punch on the giant sign advertising the designer of Aura, a future 36-story residential building going up opposite the Downtown Plaza. She’s got real smarty-smart book learnt things to say about it, so all I’ll add is that it looks to me like the building developers are trying to do that Target thing, where they sell us the product by selling us the designer. That trend is getting ridiculous at Target–at first when it was Isaac Mizrahi, that worked because he had name recognition for more than a handful of fashion-lovers–and using it on an architect is simply weird.

CoolDMZ is many things. I was told recently by my 2-year-old that I’m “just a man who loves stickers,” for example. But one of the things I am not is a real estate or economics expert. So take the following with a few dashes of salt (to taste).

When I read that there are indicators of slowing home sales, I expect to be told of the number of actual home sales, since a sale indicates an actual transaction–demand being met by supply, capital being exchanged for capital. So in the above article, as in so many others, I only get the number of houses being supplied by the market, my skepticism alarm goes off. If three times as many homes are for sale this month as there were last year, that means crap to me about home sales unless I know how many of those homes were bought. Maybe there is a terminology problem here–maybe “home sales” really does mean “for sale signs posted.”
Continue reading “Home Sales Skepticism”