From Bloomberg:

Prices dropped in 54 of 150 metropolitan areas in the third quarter and the median sales price tumbled 2 percent nationwide, the National Association of Realtors said today.
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Palm Bay, Florida, had the biggest price decline in the third quarter, tumbling 12.4 percent from a year earlier. Sacramento, California, fell 10.5 percent and Sarasota, Florida, dropped 10.4 percent.NAR Report [xls]

From the Central Valley Business Times:

From the Stockton Record: Home-sales auctions have popped in the Central Valley since last summer, but the latest twist is an online auction for new homes with a bidding process similar to that used by eBay.
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Some residents there aren't happy about the impending auction. Richard Provencio lives at the north end of Crescent Park Circle, a lane that has 14 of the 18 houses to be auctioned off - the remaining four are model homes a block south. "I feel very robbed," he said. "These are the same houses I paid $620,000 for, and now they could be selling for $300,000 to $400,000."...Recently, he counted 15 houses for sale down the long street from his house, and many sit empty because of foreclosure. "Our ghost town," he said. "It's just sad, man."

Many of the homes in the development were bought initially by investors and then filled with renters, he said...The auction likely will draw only more investors, who then will put renters into the houses, he said.
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From the Central Valley Business Times: Central Valley cities are among the most likely places in the nation to see home prices decline in the next two years, according to a report Tuesday from the PMI Group Inc. (NYSE: PMI), a Walnut Creek-based writer of mortgage insurance. The most likely place in the country is Naples, Fla., in PMI’s opinion, but Stockton and Merced are tied as the fifth most likely locations for price declines.

Home prices in the Sacramento region fell by the largest amount on record, according to a report [pdf] released today by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Sacramento's House Price Index (HPI) dropped 8.41% in the third quarter, the largest year-over-year decline since 1977, the year the government started tracking home appreciation for the Sacramento real estate market.

Top 5 year-over-year price declines since 1977:

2007 Q3: -8.41%
1983 Q3: -7.80%
1994 Q4: -6.67%
1995 Q1: -6.45%
1994 Q3: -6.24%

From Forbes (hat tip Patient Renter):It's no secret that homeowners with subprime mortgages have taken a beating. Next up: those who have combined their mortgages with home equity loans, second loans or both. These combinations spell especially bad news for homeowners in Sacramento, Calif., San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Colorado Springs, Colo., markets with some of the nation's highest concentrations of homeowner debt. In these spots, prices are dropping, making it very difficult for homeowners to refinance as lenders are reluctant to take on risk.
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1. Sacramento, Calif.
Percent change [in median price] from 2007: -18.5%
Total outstanding mortgages: 480,881
Second mortgage or home equity loan: 129,736 (27%)
Both second mortgage and home equity loan: 7,288 (1.5%)Compare to other cities here.

From the Central Valley Business Times:Apartment rental rates held steady in the third quarter, despite people being forced out of their homes by foreclosures, says RealFacts, a Novato-based database publisher specializing in the multifamily housing market. Even in the Central Valley’s San Joaquin County, which has seen one of the nation’s highest per capita default and foreclosure rates, rents have increased just 2.6 percent year-over-year, with occupancy rates essentially unchanged, says RealFacts.
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From the Sacramento Bee: A persistent housing slump that has relentlessly driven down home prices has now wiped out at least three years of home equity gains across much of the Sacramento region...For buyers, who have driven home sellers and much of the real estate industry mad by patiently remaining on the fence, it's fresh proof of a market getting ever more warm and friendly.

That's especially true in suburban neighborhoods with plenty of new construction. "I've got two sets of buyers looking at property in Lincoln, 2,943 square feet listed for $325,000," said Viki Benbow, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent. "It's like $106 or $107 a square foot. Those houses three years ago were selling in the mid-$500,000s."
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DataQuick estimated that 27.6 percent of the region's existing home sales in October involved foreclosure properties. It was 35.9 percent in Sacramento County.
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From the Sacramento Bee: Every business day in the region an average of 85 people lost their homes to lenders, near double the number of foreclosures from June, according to Fair Oaks-based Foreclosures.com, a Web site for real estate investors.
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"I don't think we are seeing the worst of these numbers," said Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors. Kleinhenz and others said they expect high foreclosure numbers to continue for at least another six months.DataQuick Stats by County
DataQuick Stats by Zip

From the Sacramento Bee: As foreclosures continue to grow in the capital-area real estate market, Sacramento and Elk Grove are copying a trend launched last year in Stockton: bus tours of bank-owned homes. As the buying season begins, three tours are planned for Feb. 23. There's one for investors in Sacramento and two for first-time buyers and investors in Elk Grove.
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Some January price statistics for Sacramento County via the Sacramento Real Estate blog:

• Median: -27.5% YoY
• Average: -28.4% YoY
• Price per square foot: -27% YoY

From the Stockton Record:

A second major foreclosed-home auction will be coming to Stockton next week, with about 85 Stockton-area houses going up for sale at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds.
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"The sellers are motivated, but they're not going to just dump the properties on the market," company spokesman Joe Joffrion said.
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From Bloomberg:The median price for a single-family home in the U.S. dropped 7.7 percent in the first quarter, the biggest decline in at least 29 years, as values tumbled in two-thirds of U.S. cities, the National Association of Realtors said...The biggest declines were in Sacramento, the capital of California, which had a 29 percent drop, followed by the metropolitan area around Riverside and San Bernardino, with a decline of 28 percent.From the NAR's October 2005 Sacramento "Anti-Bubble Report" (shockingly, the report is no longer available on nar.org!):With home prices rising strongly in most parts of the country, there has been widespread media coverage on the possibility of a housing market bust. A thorough analysis of the Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville metro market, as detailed below, reveals that there is little danger of this. In fact, the local housing market is in excellent shape with a potential for significant housing equity gains, particularly for homebuyers who plan to remain in their house for the long run...Housing equity will most likely continue to accumulate to local homeowners.
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From the Sacramento Bee: For new and existing homes combined: Sacramento County's October median sales price fell to $299,500. That's the first dip below $300,000 as the price slump continues and the lowest median price since April 2004. Sales prices have now fallen 22.6 percent from their August 2005 peak of $387,000, DataQuick reported.
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From Bloomberg:U.S. home prices had their biggest fourth quarter decline since 1991, according to a report [pdf] by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight released today.
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California, with a decline of 6.6 percent, led all states, Ofheo said. It was followed by Nevada (5.9 percent), Florida (4.7 percent) and Michigan (4.3 percent). All 20 areas with the greatest price declines in 2007 were in those four states, according to Ofheo. The top three were in California: Merced (19 percent), Modesto (15.5 percent), and Stockton (15.3 percent), Ofheo said.The Sacramento region came in at #12 with a record 11.0 percent year-over-year drop, the first double-digit decline in the index's history. With that, every price index now shows double-digit depreciation.

Monterey Village Getting Shredded - photos & video at the Sacramento Real Statistics blog

From the Wall Street Journal: Cities and counties with some of the worst fallout from the nation's housing slump also are seeing a sharp upswing in vacant homes, a trend economists say might set up further declines in home prices. The national homeowner vacancy rate, which gauges the number of vacant homes on the market, rose to 2.8% in the fourth quarter, according to Census Bureau data.
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Vacancies...jumped in some once-booming Western cities. Between 2005 and 2007, homeowner vacancies more than tripled to 3.8% from 1.2% in the Riverside-San Bernardino area, part of California's Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles. In the Sacramento area, vacancies jumped to 4.2% from 1.2%.Interactive Map - We beat Detroit!

From the Modesto Bee: Monica Granados regularly encounters people who aren't even trying to fight foreclosure in San Joaquin County. Granados is a process server who delivers eviction notices to houses repossessed by lenders.
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The Sacramento Real Estate blog reports that Sacramento County's price per square foot was $149.84 in April, a 33.9% drop from last year. That translates into a 41% decline in 31 months. Of note, this is the first resale home metric to cross the 40% off peak mark.

With regards to asking prices, Housing Tracker shows a median price decline of 28.9% year-over-year. The median has dropped 37.7% since August 2005.

More Sacramento real estate market figures for April at the Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog.

From the Central Valley Business Times:Home values in the first quarter of 2008 fell 1.6 percent from the fourth quarter and 7.7 percent from the year-ago quarter, marking the most significant year-over-year decline in the past 12 years, Zillow says.

UPDATE - RealtyTrac's Q3 2007 Metros Report - Sacramento:

From the Sacramento Bee: Banks repossessed nearly 5,300 homes in the capital region during the first three months of 2008, setting a record and pushing the region's foreclosure tally to more than 15,300 since the beginning of 2007....The number of home loan defaults also neared 10,000 during the quarter in Amador, Nevada, El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.

Those defaults...hint at thousand more foreclosures in months to come. Altogether, the region has now seen about 34,000 home loan defaults since January 2007, according to DataQuick. From DQNews: Last quarter's default numbers were a record in almost all of the state's 58 counties.
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Foreclosure resales have emerged as a significant market factor, accounting for 33.1 percent of all California resale activity last quarter. A year ago it was 3.2 percent. Foreclosure resales vary significantly by area, from 5.1 percent in San Francisco County to 66.7 percent in San Joaquin County.
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From the Modesto Bee:Northern San Joaquin Valley home prices have plummeted, but they haven't fallen enough to become affordable for most wage earners, a new study shows. Home buyers must earn about $98,000 a year to comfortably afford a median-priced house in Stanislaus County, the Center for Housing Policy reports. But workers in only one of the 64 occupations studied -- construction managers -- earned that much last year. Even two-income couples with good jobs -- such as accountants, police officers, school teachers and firefighters -- barely can cover ownership costs, the report showed.
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In calculating what's affordable, the study assumed not more than 28 percent of household income should pay the mortgage, property taxes and insurance. It also assumed buyers had a 10 percent down payment with a conventional loan.
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From the Sacramento Bee:When times get tough, the tough ... take a sabbatical. That's the philosophy of developer Martin Tuttle, who is temporarily leaving his VP post with Sacramento builder New Faze Development.
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Tuttle says his wife's job offer came at the right time – just as the tough housing market forced New Faze to reduce its staff by about one-third, through layoffs and attrition.
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From the Sacramento Bee:In Sacramento County, sales of new and existing homes totaled 1,961 in April, the highest since Sept. 2006, according to DataQuick. The April sales tally was 26.3 percent higher than April 2007 -- the first time that year-over-year sales in the county have posted a gain since March 2005, DataQuick reported.
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Prices have rapidly dropped with heavily discounted, bank-owned homes accounting for a majority of purchases in the eight-county capital region. That means the lower end of the housing market is fueling much of the surge. Median sales prices -- where half the homes sell for more and half for less -- are down to Feb. 2003 levels in Sacramento County. The county's median sales price in April fell to $232,000 -- down 32 percent from a year ago [the steepest decline yet] and 40 percent off its Aug. 2005, high of $387,000.Jim Wasserman has the breakdown by county here [xls].

From the Sacramento Bee: California's severe housing downturn claimed another fixture of the Sacramento-area homebuilding industry Wednesday when John D. Reynen, co-founder of Reynen & Bardis Communities, filed for personal bankruptcy protection...It's the second major bankruptcy-protection filing involving a privately owned land developer and builder in the capital region.
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The company, formed more than 30 years ago, has largely shut down homebuilding and recently laid off about half of its 180 employees.Press release available via Home Front.

From the Sacramento Bee:
During the first three months of the year, banks repossessed a record-shattering 5,278 homes in the Sacramento region, La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems said Tuesday. Put another way: The area's first-quarter foreclosures already are half of last year's entire total.
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From Bloomberg: Home prices fell in 23 U.S. metropolitan areas in March, led by Sacramento and San Diego, as rising foreclosures prolonged the housing recession. The price per square foot in Sacramento, California's capital, dropped 31 percent to $160 from a year earlier, according to a report released today by New York-based Radar Logic Inc., a real estate data company.From Housing Wire: Most key markets in California saw motivated sales comprise a growing portion of transaction volume, as well. In Oakland, distressed sales were 35 percent of the housing market in March, RadarLogic said; in Sacramento, that number soared to nearly 50 percent.From the Sacramento Bee: At the current sales pace, real estate experts say, it will take 13 years to develop and sell all the new homes planned in Yuba County and its neighbor, Sutter County. "That is horrifying. That's like seeing a mouse under the table," says Dean Wehrli, a Sacramento-based home-building industry consultant, addressing a home-builders meeting last week.

From KCRA: A new Centex Homes development in Rancho Cordova is in limbo because of a dreary housing market, the developer confirmed Thursday. The 13 homes currently under construction in the Cypress at Kavala Ranch development will be finished, but none of the other lots will be developed for now.From Bloomberg: When Quinn Cuthbertson looks around his new neighborhood in El Dorado Hills, California, he sees rows of empty homes and barren hillsides. A promised new school and a clubhouse haven't materialized. Cuthbertson paid $460,000 for a four-bedroom house in this northern California town named for the mythical golden city. He now suspects his neighbor spent $45,000 less. Nearby, 87 of 98 Toll Brothers Inc. home sites are undeveloped.
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"Half-filled developments are an advertisement for a failing housing market," said Retsinas, a former assistant secretary for housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "It also has a spillover effect on the surrounding community."
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From the NPD Group: The consumer technology industry, whose performance has traditionally outpaced the broader economy, is showing signs of being affected by today’s weakening economy, especially in certain cities, according to the Market Tracking Service provided by leading consumer and retail information provider The NPD Group, Inc.

According to NPD, five of the six designated market areas (DMAs) with the biggest declines in consumer technology spending for the fourth quarter of 2007 - among the top 30 DMAS based on population - were also housing markets with some of the most significant price declines for the fourth quarter of 2007 (as reported by The National Association of Realtors). Sacramento, Tampa, Phoenix, Detroit, and Orlando all experienced the largest declines in consumer technology spending, based on dollars per store.

Q4 2007 Consumer Technology Spending By Market

Total U.S. -4.3%
Sacramento -14.0%
Tampa -12.8%
Phoenix -11.2%
Detroit -11.1%

From the Granite Bay PT: Michael Lyon, chief executive officer for Lyon Real Estate...told the audience the market has changed drastically. In 2001 about 800 homes were sold throughout Placer County in about a month. "Today there are about 2,460 homes for sale in Placer County and only about 219 are sold each month," he said.

From the Sacramento Bee: [EDD labor market consultant David] Lyons said it was disturbing that the region has added just 6,600 jobs in the past year, a growth rate of just 0.7 percent. "We haven't been below 1 percent since 1993," he said. Unemployment has risen 1 percentage point in Sacramento in the past year. With housing still suffering and state government likely to slow down its hiring in the face of an estimated $14 billion budget deficit, the short-term outlook for Sacramento is spotty at best.From the Sacramento Business Journal: Year-over-year, construction fell by 7,200 jobs in the region, a 10.1 percent decline, while financial jobs declined by 3,100, off 4.7 percent. Those declines were steeper here than in the state as a whole.

From the Sacramento Bee:[W]ith 12,000-plus "For Sale" signs in the region, the market hasn't yet reached bottom, said ReMax's [Randy] Dunham. At month's end there were 12,606 homes for sale in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to Sacramento-based researcher TrendGraphix. The peak in August 2007 was 16,262.
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"Borrowers are more cautious about what they can afford," said Michele Dillingham, a senior loan consultant at Sacramento-based Vitek Mortgage. "A lot of people are buying at below what they would qualify for. They saw what happened (with foreclosures) and don't want it to happen to them."DataQuick stats by county
DataQuick stats by zip (or xls)

From Home Front: Is this sustainable?

From the Sacramento Bee:
When DataQuick Information Systems reported this week that Sacramento County posted its first gain in year-over year home sales in 37 months, these were the neighborhoods that made it happen: working-class areas in south Sacramento, North Highlands and North Sacramento, Elverta and Citrus Heights...What they have in common is an abundance of homes with falling values, heavily discounted bank-owned residences and scenes of multiple bids by investors and first-time buyers.
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During the third quarter of 2007, Meadowview's 95832 was one of California's most default-prone ZIP codes....April sales jumped 266 percent over the same month in 2007. The ZIP code's median sales price was $185,000, down 44 percent in just a year...[DataQuick's Andrew] LePage said 79 percent of the April sales in that ZIP code were homes lost to foreclosure during the past year.
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