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March Home Sales Activity Soars Throughout Solano County

April 13th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

March Solano Home Sales ReportMeanwhile, Prices Drop In Benicia & Vallejo But Climb In The North County

After a February in which home sales activity in Solano County dropped noticeably, it roared back with a gusto in March, perhaps in part due to the upcoming end of the federal tax credit program.

Solano Up 44% Over Last Month

All five cities in our Solano market area showed robust gains in the number of closed sales last month. Countywide, the number of home sales in Solano was up 44% over February.

Vallejo led the way with an incredible 71% increase, followed by Benicia (61%), Vacaville (56%), Suisun (34%) and Fairfield (9%).

Prices Up 5% Countywide, But…

Prices, though, were another story. Up north, in Fairfield, Vacaville and Suisun, prices were up. In Vallejo and Benicia they were down. County-wide, the median price climbed from $190,000 to $200,000 — a very healthy 5% increase.

Fairfield had a huge one-month gain, as its median jumped 18% — from $190,000 in February to $225,000 in March. Vacaville was up 9%, from $215,000 to $234,325. And Suisun’s median of $200,000 was 2% higher than a month ago.

Vallejo, meanwhile, was down a mere 1% at $148,500 (from $150,000 in Feb.). The big drop, though, was in Benicia, where the median plummeted from $311,375 to $251,000 — a 19% decline.

Before You Get Too Concerned About Benicia

Now, before you jump to any conclusions about Benicia, remember that 29 closed sales is a very small sample size, especially when you consider that there were 529 home sales countywide in March.

And, as I’ve cautioned many times before, there’s a real danger in reading too much into a single month’s median price figures, since a few extra sales at one end of the price spectrum can often skew the median, particularly in smaller cities like Benicia or Suisun, where the sample size is quite low.

Quarterly figures are often much more relevant, for they allow you to smooth out the highs and lows over a 3-month period. I’ll be publishing the 1st Quarter 2010 numbers in the next day or two.

In terms of comparison, Benicia’s $251,000 median price for March is incredibly 40% lower than it was as recently as January, when the city reported its highest total in over a year, at $420,000. So I suspect the quarterly numbers for Benicia will paint a somewhat different story than March alone.

Compared To March 2009

Compared to a year ago, the number of sales is down 14% countywide, which is due in large part to there being far fewer homes on the market today than there were a year ago, particularly in the most affordable cities in the county.

At the end of March, for example, Vallejo reported 374 active listings. A year earlier, there were 629. Fairfield had 301 this March and 461 at the end of Mar. ‘09. So with fewer homes to choose from, you’d expect fewer sales.

Benicia was the only city in Solano County which bucked the year-to-year decrease. It reported 29 closed home sales in Mar. ‘10 compared to 20 in Mar. ‘09 — a 45% increase. But again, we’re talking small sample-size.

Download The Complete March Report

Our monthly Solano County Housing Report features three pages of statistics — probably enough data to satisfy the even the most ardent number hound.

You’ll find statistics for the county and all five cities in our market area for March 2010 plus cumulative totals for the past 12 months. There’s also a year-to-year comparison so you can see how each city in the county fared compared to Mar. ‘09

Be sure to look for our 1st Quarter Solano County 2010 Home Sales Report as well as our Benicia & Vallejo Home Sales Reports. Both will be published in the next few days.  A complete archive of previous reports is available by clicking on the links below.

If you have additional questions about this month’s report or would like information about buying or selling a home in Solano County’s complex housing market, please contact us.

If you’d like to search for single family homes, condominiums or townhomes in Benicia, Vallejo or the rest of Solano County, be sure to visit our Home Search page. You can even set  up a customized personal search and receive MLS listings directly in your email inbox whenever new listings or price changes occur in our MLS.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 10:50 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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