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Solano Monthly Home Sales Report For Oct. ‘09

November 9th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

Month Home Sales GraphicI just finished downloading and compiling October’s 2009’s final home sales totals for Solano County.

In a nutshell, the numbers ended up right about where I expected.

No big surprises, but rather more of what we’ve been seeing for the past few months: stabilizing prices and smaller inventories, with overall totals similar to where they’ve been in recent months but lower than they were at the same time a year ago.

Median Sales Price

As the graph below illustrates, the median sales price was up slightly in several cities and down slightly in a few others — but overall, the numbers aren’t that far off from where they were in August and September.

Solano Median Sales Price Graph

The county-wide and city-by-by city median sales price for October (September’s median in parenthesis):

  • Solano County –$195,000 ($200,000)
  • Benicia — $374,000 ($379,900)
  • Fairfield/Gr Valley — $200,000 ($185,250)
  • Suisun City — $187,500 ($202,000)
  • Vacaville — $225,000 ($258,000)
  • Vallejo — $150,000 ($140,000)

Before you put too much weight on the differences in Suisun and Vacaville, remember that a one-month sample size is usually too small to confirm any emerging trends. So you have to go back at least a few months to see the overall picture.

If you do so, you’ll see that September’s figures spiked in Suisun and Vacaville. But this month’s median for both cities is more in line with where it was the previous few months.

Here are a few other highlights from this month’s report:

Distress Sales

The “leader” in distress sale properties continues to be Vallejo, where 4 out of every 5 home sales last month were either bank-owned (REO) or a short sale. The city-by-city numbers:

  • Solano County –74%
  • Benicia — 52%
  • Fairfield/Gr Valley — 73%
  • Suisun City — 71%
  • Vacaville — 65%
  • Vallejo — 81%

While these numbers are still much higher than we’d like, they’re starting to come down a bit in the most impacted cities. But that may be due more to the lack of many banks releasing much of their REO inventory than to an actual decrease in foreclosure activity.

Same Time Last Year

If you compare this October to last October, you’ll see that the median price was down 17% county-wide. But the month-to-month gap is narrowing. Back in May and June, the year-to-year difference for ‘09 was 36% lower than in ‘08. July was -26%, August -21% and September -22%.

So you can see that while prices remain lower than they were a year ago, they have started to rise gradually from their low point earlier this year.

City by city, here’s how October ‘09 compared with Oct. ‘08 (September’s totals in parenthesis):

  • Solano County -17% (-22%)
  • Benicia -10% (-11%)
  • Fairfield/Gr Valley -20% (-29%)
  • Suisun City -9% (-10%)
  • Vacaville -14% (-8%)
  • Vallejo -23% (-32%)

This is just a small sampling of all the housing numbers you’ll find in this month’s Solano Home Sales Report. To view the full report, click here. And, if you’re a real stat hound, you can also revisit any of the previous reports, by clicking  the links at the bottom each post.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 9:29 am and is filed under Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, 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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