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Solano Pending Home Sales Up, Inventory Down As Tax Credit Draws To A Close

April 28th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville

Whether it’s due to the impending federal tax credit deadline or just the normal spring real estate market surge, home sale activity has definitely picked up in recent weeks in Solano County, which in turn weekly-solano-home-reporthas caused the supply of homes for sale to drop.

This past week marks the first time all year that all five cities in our Solano County market area have seen their inventory of homes decline in the same week.

Vallejo (-20) and Fairfield (-24) both experienced double-digit drops in their housing supply, while the other three cities saw a nominal decrease (Benicia & Fairfield -4 and Suisun -2).

Yet, even that is a significant change from what occurred earlier this year.

For most of the first three months, the inventory increased throughout the county. But in the last few weeks we’ve seen it starting to drop here and there.

For the year, it’s still higher than it was in January in all five cities. Vallejo leads the way with a 46% year-to-date increase. But as recently as April 5, it was up 58% for the year. So as you can see, the inventory has begun to soften.

But the even bigger news in Solano this week is the recent spike in pending sales, which should also foretell a big increase in the number of closed sales for May in June.

Most of the cities in our Solano market area have approached year-to-date highs in pending sales over the past two weeks. This past week, every city except Suisun reported pending sales well above its YTD average.

For example:

  • Benicia had its fourth highest total of the year last week with 8 pending sales; its YTD average is 5.7.
  • Vallejo had its second highest total of 2010 last week and its fourth highest total the week before. Last week’s 55 pending sales far eclipsed its 41.4 sales/week average.
  • Fairfield had its 4th highest total of the year last week and its 3rd highest the week before. There were 41 sales last week, almost 20% above its 33.4/wk average.
  • Vacaville hit its high water mark last week (35 sales). That’s 40% above its 21.2./week average.

My hunch is that part of the spike in new sales is due to the urgency for many first-time buyers to get into contract by the end of April so they can take advantage of the federal tax credit.

In order to qualify for the credit, buyers must have a ratified contract by Apr. 30 and close escrow by June 30.

We track the weekly home sales statistics for the five cities in our Solano County market area and publish the weekly report periodically, whenever there are notable trends or statistics.

You can download this week’s Solano County Home Sales Report and see week-by-week home sales and housing supply totals for Benicia, Vallejo, Fairfield, Suisun and Vacaville.

To search for homes in our market area, be sure to visit our Home Search page. You can set up customized home searches and receive results automatically in your email inbox. For additional information or to see any of these homes, please contact us.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 12:27 am and is filed under Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville. 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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