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Sept. 09 Solano Home Sale Stats: Looks Like The Market Is Indeed Stabilizing

October 10th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

If you’re a number cruncher or really like to read the boxscores on the sports page, you’re going to love my next few posts.Solano Monthly Home Sales Report - Click Here For it’s that time of the month when we get to look back and see what really happened the previous month.

I just downloaded Solano County’s home sale numbers for September and have assembled several reports, which you can download.

In a nutshell, the median price for Solano on a county-wide basis was largely the same as it was last month ($200,000 in Sept. and $197,950 in Aug.). And the number of sales was pretty much the same, too (528 in September and 506 in August).Solano Monthly Median Home Sales Price Thru Sept 09

The biggest stories, though, were in some of the individual cities. For example, Suisun, where the inventory remains very low, was the only city where the number of sales was lower than the previous month. And it was a whopping 25 percent lower than August’s total. Yet, right next door in Fairfield, sales were up almost 20% from August.

On a year-to-year basis, compared to Sept. 2008, the number of sales county-wide was virtually identical in both years (528 this year vs. 529 last year).

And, as expected, prices today are dramatically lower than they were last September (22% lower on a county-wide basis).

As always, when you’re talking about a median prices and only a one-month sample size, you have to take a little bit with a grain of salt. For that reason, it’s a good idea to look at the progression of home prices over a series of months.

So if you look at the chart above, you’ll see that prices for the most part have either trended up or at the very least stabilized in recent months. And that’s a good sign, for stabilization is always the first step in any recovery period.

Some more highlights from this month’s report (be sure to download the full report for more details):

  • The highest sales price last month was $773,650, for a home on Johns Pl in Benicia.
  • The lowest price was $32,000 for a bank-owned condominium on Corcoran Ave. in Vallejo.
  • Vallejo and Fairfield led the way with the highest percentage of distress sales (REOs and Short Sales) with 80% apiece. The Vallejo figure is about 5% lower than it was in August, which is a good sign.
  • Benicia had the fewest distress sales (55%) in the county, but that total is still 13% higher than it was a month ago.
  • Vallejo’s median price last month was $140,000 — that’s 32% less than it in Sept. ‘08 ($207,225).
  • Fairfield’s year-to-year numbers painted a similar picture: $260,000 last year and $185,250 this September — a 29% drop.
  • The smallest differential between Sept. ‘08 and ‘09 was, not surprisingly in Benicia: $429,000 in ‘08 and $379,900 in ‘09. That’s  an 11% drop in value over the past year, which doesn’t sound great… until you realize it’s only 1/3 the decline that neighboring Vallejo experienced over that same span.

I also just downloaded the stats for the entire 3rd quarter (July-Sept). Be sure to look for that article in the next few days.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 11:42 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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