From the Sacramento Bee: It's only one month's data, and it came from a winter month that's considered unreliable for trend spotting. But February sales of new and existing homes in Sacramento County -- the largest sector of the region's real estate market -- were just 7.7 percent fewer than in February 2007.
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From the Associated Press: Residential homebuilder Dunmore Homes Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection in New York, the latest victim of the faltering U.S. housing market. The privately owned builder, based Granite Bay, Calif., near Sacramento, listed assets and debts each of more than $100 million in its bankruptcy petition filed Thursday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The company didn't say what prompted it to seek bankruptcy protection. But Michael A.

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.

From the Sacramento Bee: [I]f this year is like the last two, the Super Bowl is now just the last game of the season, not the opening shot of the home- selling year. Indeed, there's a chance the peak buying activity of 2008 may have already happened.

In both 2006 and 2007, escrow closings – where all the paperwork is done and buyers get the keys – peaked in March, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems. That means the homes were likely sold sometime in January or early February.

A March peak isn't something the industry likes or wants to see again this year. In 2006, a March peak showed there wouldn't be a big spring rebound and proved the downturn was real. In 2007, the subprime crisis arrived in March and pushed down sales for the rest of the year.

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: "We keep seeing more and more horror stories about the economy," said Michael McGee of Winchester McGee Financial, a Rancho Cordova mortgage brokerage firm. McGee said higher mortgage rates aren't helping a housing market that he believes is the worst of his 36-year career. "It's never been as bad as it is today," he said.
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Consultant Steve Dutra said higher rates will blunt the impact of falling housing prices, which analysts had hoped would kick-start a new round of buying. "With prices coming down, we were hoping interest rates would stay low as well," said Dutra, a vice president in the Sacramento office of Irvine-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting. Higher rates means "a certain amount of people will be taken out of the market," he said.
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Alan Wagner, president of the Sacramento Association of Realtors, said he's trying to persuade potential homebuyers to jump in now before rates get any higher. "Now's the time to buy your property," he said.

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.

From the Sacramento Bee: Almost from the start when struggling Dunmore Homes announced in September it was selling its assets to a loan consultant, rumors started in the home building industry that the deal involved an unconventional sales price and had something to do with a big tax refund. The gossip was on the money. The newly sold company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November. Now, documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York show that Sid Dunmore sold his Granite Bay firm to Sacramento-based loan consultant Michael Kane for $500.

From the Sacramento Business Journal:
The average price per square foot of homes sold in the Sacramento metropolitan area fell nearly 15 percent in a year, the biggest drop among 25 major national markets tracked by Radar Logic Inc., the New York-based real estate analyst reported Friday.The Sacramento real estate market has ended up in last place for three consecutive months, beating out markets such as San Diego, Las Vegas, and Tampa. Sacramento also claimed the bottom spot for condo price appreciation for the third month running, with prices plunging 21.5% compared with the prior year.

A look at Sacramento real estate market numbers for November:

• Sacramento Real Estate Statistics Blog
• Sacramento Real Estate Blog
  

From the Sacramento News & Review: I was searching for signs of the coming economic apocalypse along the stressed seams of Sacramento’s suburban neighborhoods, and honey buckets [aka porta-potties] seemed like a perfectly reasonable place to start...It seems reasonable to expect, given rising unemployment in the construction industry, to find stacks of honey buckets piling up all over the country. We might point to this excess as an indicator of reduced economic activity, a honey-bucket index, if you will.
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After the real-estate bubble popped 18 months ago, the porta-potties began stacking up at the rental place [my Dad] drives by on the way into town [Redding]. Nowadays, so many honey buckets have been returned, they’re stacking them outside the fence. Surely, my father speculated, the same phenomenon must exist in Sacramento.

From the Sacramento Bee: The prediction season is here. On Thursday, Greg Paquin, president of the Folsom-based Gregory Group, told capital- area home builders that they can expect to sell 7,710 new homes next year in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. That compares with expectations of 8,116 homes this year, he said. Builders had almost 9,600 sales last year.

From the Sacramento Bee: [T]here's no doubt the steep drop in home values – median prices in Sacramento County are almost 28 percent below last year's figures – and relatively low interest rates have sparked interest. [DataQuick's Andrew] LePage said investor buys accounted for 18.6 percent of February closings in Sacramento County. That's up significantly from 12.7 percent in November and December. [The high for investor buys was May 2004 when they accounted for 25 percent of sales.]
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Overall, sales remained weak, though real estate broker Tom Zipp of Citrus Heights said Thursday that rising investor activity "traditionally signals the bottom part of the market."DQ stats by county (All Homes & Existing SFH/Condos/New Homes)
DQ stats by zip code

From DQNews:The number of mortgage default notices filed against California homeowners jumped last quarter to its highest level in more than fifteen years, a real estate information service reported. Lending institutions sent homeowners 81,550 default notices during the October-to-December period. That was up by 12.4 percent from 72,571 the previous quarter, and up 114.6 percent from 37,994 for fourth-quarter 2006, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Last quarter's number of defaults was the highest in DataQuick's statistics, which go back to 1992...Last quarter's default numbers were a record in 42 of the state's 58 counties.
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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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From the Sacramento Bee: Calling the bottom of a real estate cycle is more than difficult these days. It's perilous, an invitation for news sources who answer the question to be ripped by critics. There are so many points of view and so much passion. And there are so many who have offered false sightings in the past two years.
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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 Business Journal:Add one more casualty from the housing downturn: homeowners associations. They need a steady flow of monthly dues, which can slow down when a member loses a house or condominium to foreclosure, or even when family budgets get tight.
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Some associations are no longer getting dues from 30 percent or even half of their units...The Wild Wings Homeowners Association has seen a 30 percent drop in the amount of dues being paid, said board member Jordan Durbin. The development has 337 freestanding homes about five miles west of Woodland. Far less than 30 percent of the homes are in foreclosure, but even some residents who aren't facing foreclosure don't send in the checks. "Money is pretty tight for a lot of families," Durbin said.
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From CBS 13: If you're looking to buy a home in the down market you may think you're getting a deal on a foreclosure. But beware, the bank may be one step ahead of you. Banks could be in a bidding war to sell you short...Banks find the fair market value on a foreclosed home then list the home for less -- sometimes tens of thousand of dollars less. What looks like a good deal to a potential buyer can spark a bidding war which drives the price back up for the banks and buyers.
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From the Sacramento Bee:That economic downturn bug that's going around? Local tire sellers have caught it. "My sales are off 20 percent," said Ahad Parvez, owner of A&A Tires on Watt Avenue in Sacramento. "Business is terrible. This is the worst it's ever been – and I've been selling tires for 20 years."

Local tire retailers are in a jam. Construction firms that used to wear out tires running between jobs during the home building boom haven't been driving as much since the bubble collapsed. Meanwhile, wary consumers are tapping the brakes on spending, especially higher-end tire and wheel purchases that give shop owners the most profit.
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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 KCRA (hat tips - Spacebar & SacramentoCrash):

Across the country, fire investigators are looking at some homeowners in foreclosure as potential arsonists...Sacramento fire investigator Steve Johnson said spite, revenge and pyromania are a few reasons for arson. But firefighters are adding desperation to that list. "Nationally, we've been told foreclosed homes have been set on fire," Johnson said. "People are thinking this is the easy way out."
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"That sign in the front yard is always going to be in the back of our head going, 'I need to really concentrate on why is this an accidental fire? To make it look like an accidental fire? And in retrospect, they are trying to burn their house down to pay it off?'" Johnson said.From the Tri-Valley Herald:

An early morning house fire gutted a Tracy home Wednesday morning, a few hours before bank and police officials arrived to post an eviction notice on the foreclosed property.
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Jim Wasserman in the Sacramento Bee: Throughout 2007, borrowers in trouble with lenders have called here, written for help and cried in conversations about their desperate straits. For a newspaper, it's become a gut reality check, a window into this tough time of reckoning.
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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.

SL welcomes the Sacramento Bee to the Sacramento real estate blogosphere. What took so long?

The good news (from a buyer perspective): Homes are becoming more affordable as prices plummet. From the the Sacramento Bee:
There's a flip side to the Sacramento-area housing downturn that has would-be buyers cheering: Sacramento is getting more affordable. Falling sales prices between last summer and the end of 2007 triggered a nice jump in affordability in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to an index compiled this week by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo & Co. 27.2 percent of homes sold in October, November and December were affordable to households earning the region's median income of $67,200.The bad news? Affordability is only back to 2004 levels:
The new eligible buyer percentage for Sacramento was the best since 27.4 percent in the first quarter of 2004...[I]t doesn't take much to remember better days from 10 years ago. In the first quarter of 1998, 70 percent of area homes were affordable for people earning at least the median income, according to the home builders and Wells Fargo.The last time affordability was this low (aside from 2004) was in 1991, at the front-end of the 1990s housing bust. Between 1993 and 2000, the index remained above 50%.

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 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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