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August Home Sales Report For Solano County: More Proof That Better Times Lie Ahead

September 7th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

Solano Monthly Home Sales Report - Click HereIt’s the first week of the month and you know what that means — time to publish the monthly home sales statistics for Solano County.

There was quite a spread last month, with the lowest home sale a condominium in Vallejo that fetched $27,700 and the highest a 9-acre ranch in Vacaville that sold for a cool $1 million.

Real estate certainly seems to be on everyone’s mind these days and for most people, the big question is ‘have we really turned the corner’?

Things Are Looking Better, However…

Well, if you look at August’s home sale numbers, there are all sorts of signs that say “yes” but still a few signs that show we’re not entirely out of the woods just yet.

Overall, though, the signs continue to be far more positive than negative.

For example, August was the first month all year where none of the five cities in our Solano market area saw their median sales price decline from the previous month.

Aside from Vacaville, where August’s number was the same as July, every other city in the county saw its median sales price climb last month. Fairfield’s median price was up 22% over a month ago and Benicia’s climbed above the $400,000 mark for the first time all year.

Compared To August 2008…

In the year-to-year category, the results were mixed, yet aside from what we saw in Benicia, it was about what I expected.

  • Compared to August of 2008, the number of home sales was up in Benicia, Suisun and Vallejo and down in Fairfield and Vacaville.
  • Prices, meanwhile, were 20%-30% below where they were a year ago in most of the county.
  • Benicia was the lone expection, with a median price that astonishingly was 18% higher than it was last August.

One note on median prices — you always have to take a single month’s results with a grain of salt, since a few random sales on the high or low end can artificially skew the numbers. So generally the bigger the sample size, the better the results.

Compared To Last Month…

With the drop in inventory, the number of sales has slowed. Only Suisun had more sales than last month. Here’s the number of sales for each city in our Solano market area, along with the change from last month (in blue) and percentage

  • Solano – 506 (92%)
  • Benicia – 26 (123%)
  • Fairfield -121 (82%)
  • Suisun – 57 (109%)
  • Vacaville – 89 (93%)
  • Vallejo – 185 (90%)

How Many Distress Sales?

Distressed sales still dominate the market throughout most of Solano County. In Vallejo, Suisun and Fairfield, better than four out of every five sales last month was either bank-owned (REO) or a short sale. Benicia was the only city with more ‘fair-market’ sales than distress sales (but only by a small margin). Here are city-by-city distress sale totals for August:

  • Solano – 78%
  • Benicia – 42%
  • Fairfield – 80%
  • Suisun – 84%
  • Vacaville – 65%
  • Vallejo – 85%

To see the complete three-page August Solano Home Sales Report for Solano County, click here.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 8:58 am and is filed under Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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