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December 2009 Monthly Home Sale Statistics For Solano County

January 24th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

I’ll preface the December 2009 Solano County Home Sale Report with the same disclaimer that I use every month:  the smaller the sample size, the greater the chance for the numbers to be skewed.

That’s why quarterly statistics usually are a better gauge of just where the market is really heading.

Nevertheless, if you look at the housing numbers month by month, you can see developing trends much sooner than if you only look at things every 3 months.

So I always track Solano’s home sale statistics on a monthly and quarterly basis.

December is always a busy month when it comes to housing statistics, since it’s also the end of the 4th quarter as well as the end of the year. So it usually takes a little longer to compile all the data. (How’s that for a shameless excuse as to why it took until the 24th of January to get these figures on-line!)2009 Solano County Median Sales Graph

Okay, so onto December’s numbers. Be sure to download the full 3-page Solano December Home Sales Report for full details on how every city in our Solano market area fared last month.

Median Price

In a nutshell, the median price for Solano County in December ($215,000) dropped 2% from what it was in November ($219,000). But the median price was higher than November’s median in both Fairfield and Suisun.

Vallejo’s median price took the biggest drop — from $178,175 in November to $155,000 in December. But that December figure was still the second highest of the entire year.

So it’s not that Vallejo really lost much ground in December; rather, November’s total was probably just abnormally high (hence my disclaimer at the top of this post).

Distress Sales

The percentage of distress sales to regular sales in most of the cities in our Solano market area remained fairly similar in December to what they had been in the previous 3 or 4 months.

Benicia though was a noteworthy exception, though, with 75% of its December closings either REOs (bank-owned) or short sales. That’s twice what it was in November and is its highest percentage since March.

But since Benicia only had 26 total closed sales, the numbers could have been skewed — especially since many short sale lenders or REO asset managers may have been motivated to close their sales before 2009 expired.

Nevertheless, since Benicia had been reporting the lowest percentage of distress sales in the county month-in and month-out, this sudden turnabout will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months.

December ‘09 vs. December ‘08

One statistic that gives you a good perspective on whether anything’s really changed in recent months is a comparison with the same period a year ago.

Countywide, the median sales price for December ($215,000) is actually 8%  higher than it was in Dec. 2008. But much of that increase can be attributed to Fairfield/Green Valley — which reported a median price 22% higher than a year ago.

The other cities in our market area all had a median price lower than in Dec. ‘08: Benicia -11%, Suisun -3%, Vacaville -16%, Vallejo -1%.

But even though its median price was down, Vacaville led the way with the biggest increase in the number of sales with a 22% increase over Dec. ‘08.

Benicia also reported more sales this year than the previous December, while Fairfield, Suisun & Vallejo all had fewer sales than a year earlier. Vallejo’s total was down 32% and Fairfield was down 23%.

The full 3-page Solano Monthly Home Sale Report for December has all sorts of charts and comparisons — enough numbers to satisfy even the most avid number cruncher.

And, if  you’re in the market for a home or thinking of selling, we’d love to assist you. Just click the contact form and we’ll be happy to get in touch with you right away. Also, be sure to visit our Home Search page for current home prices…right from our MLS system.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 11:42 pm 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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