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Archive for 'Selling'
Any Light At The End Of The End Of Solano’s Foreclosure Tunnel?
February 17th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
Everyone agrees that the real key to restoring the economy and home values lies in working through that huge backlog of distressed properties.
For, the sooner we get to a point where the lion’s share of active listings are being sold by regular sellers with equity rather than banks or upside-down borrowers, the sooner this ugly market will be behind us.
About six months ago, I downloaded the foreclosure statistics for all five cities in our Solano County market area and back then almost 60% of what had already been foreclosed upon had not yet come on the market. Most banks were keeping what has become known as their “shadow inventory” off the market.
Since that time, the banks have started to release more inventory, but rather than a flood, the release of new bank-owned listings has been more of a trickle. So a few days ago, I decided to download the raw foreclosure data and see if anything had changed.
In a nutshell, as the numbers above and below illustrate, it looks like we still have quite a way to go before the local Read the rest of this entry »
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Jan. 2010 Vallejo-Benicia Recap: Details On Every Home That Sold Last Month
February 14th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Market Update, Selling, Vallejo
One of the regular features of this blog is my monthly Benicia and Vallejo Home Sales Reports, with full details on every home that sold in Benicia and Vallejo the previous month – a “tale of the tape” of sorts.
If you want to see how much every home sold for last month, the Jan 2010 Benicia-Vallejo Home Sale reports show not only the address, closing date and sales price, but also the square footage, bedroom/bath count, how long it was on the market, and whether it was a regular sale, short sale or REO (foreclosure). I also calculate the net price change between the original list price and eventual selling price.
Every month, there are always a few eye openers. For example, last month, two homes in Vallejo sold for less than half of their original asking price, including a home on Georgia St. that started out at $349,900 and eventually sold for $159,000 — a whopping $199,000 price drop.
To see the full report, with home-by-home totals for January, 2010, click on either of the two buttons below.
Here are some highlights from those reports:
- The lowest sales price in Benicia last month was $104,800 for a Bay View Villas condo on Southampton Rd. The highest was $744,000 for a Read the rest of this entry »
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January Monthly Home Sale Report: Solano Sales Activity Hits 20-Month Low
February 8th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
But The Median Price Is 7% Higher Than Last January
I just compiled January’s Solano County Home Sales Report and while prices were down slightly, the big news, as the headline indicates, was that Solano’s overall sales totals dropped dramatically last month, to their lowest level in well over a year.
County-wide, Solano totaled 389 home sales last month, compared to 520 in December — a 25% drop. The last time there were that few monthly sales in Solano was May, 2008, when there were 384 sales. That was 20 months ago.
So the big question, of course, is whether this decline is due to
- a) the still-low inventory;
- b) the traditionally softer holiday period (most contracts accepted during the holidays usually close in January); or,
- c) an actual drop in demand due to a market-shift.
As I’ve cautioned before, Read the rest of this entry »
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Weekly Solano Real Estate Report For Feb. 1: Vallejo, Benicia Inventory Way Up In January
February 4th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
More Like A Normal January; A Sign Of Things To Come?
The first month of 2010 is now behind us and judging by the week-to-week performance over the first 30 days of the new year, we may be seeing further signs that a more normal real estate market could be on the horizon.
Last year, of course, was anything but normal. Instead of starting low and building up over the first four months of the year, the local Solano County housing supply started Read the rest of this entry »
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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!)
Okay, so onto December’s numbers. Read the rest of this entry »
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Quarterly Solano Housing Statistics — 4th Qtr Numbers For Each City In Our Market Area
January 24th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
If you’ve been sitting by your computer wondering when the final housing numbers for the 4th Quarter of 2009 would be released, today’s your lucky day. 
To see how each city in our Solano County market area fared last quarter and also how those numbers compare with a year ago, be sure to download the full Solano County Quarterly Housing Report.
Some highlights from that report:
- The median sales price was $205,450 county-wide. In Q4 of 2008, it was $221,500. So that’s a one-year drop of 7 percent. Read the rest of this entry »
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Housing Inventory Up Again In Vallejo Last Week; Benicia, Fairfield & Vaca, Too
January 19th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
All trends have to start somewhere, don’t they?
Last week, Vallejo’s inventory jumped 16%. And this week, it was up another 6%. That’s a 23% increase in just two weeks — from 242 to 299.
Benicia was up 7.3% this past week, boosting its supply to 88 active listings.
Elsewhere in the county, Fairfield was up 5.4% and Vacaville was up 4.8%. Suisun was the only city in our Solano County market area where the inventory dropped — although that decrease was only by a single home.
Download This Week’s Solano Real Estate Report
But the biggest news is still Vallejo — where the inventory hasn’t been this high since mid-June of last year.
You have to go all the way back to June 15, when there were 322 Read the rest of this entry »
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Benicia-Vallejo First-Time Buyers Just Might ‘Flip’ Over New FHA Rules
January 19th, 2010 categories: Buying, Loans / Financing, Selling
In a remarkable turnabout that could open new doors for first-time home buyers using an FHA loan in Benicia, Vallejo and other parts of Solano County, the Dept. of Housing & Urban Development just announced that beginning Feb. 1, it will allow FHA buyers to purchase “Flip” properties.
Up until now, FHA has frowned on investors who have tried to profit on this down market by buying homes at a discount and then putting them back on the market right away at a far higher price.
So in order to discourage this practice, HUD banned FHA buyers from entering into a contract 
on any home that had previously sold within the past 90 days.
To their dismay, many FHA buyers would come upon what they thought was the ideal home — which in many cases had new cabinets, counters, flooring, fresh paint and new landscaping — only to find that it was owned by an investor who purchased the home 30-40 days earlier and had spent the better part of the past month doing all these improvements. Read the rest of this entry »
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Did Somebody Change The Water In Vallejo? Check Out This Week’s Real Estate Report
January 11th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville
The new year is barely a week and a half old and already we’ve come upon our first head-turning moment.
If you’ve been following our blog on a regular basis, you know that the inventory throughout Solano County dropped steadily last year — as Vallejo and Suisun City each shed over 70% of its inventory between January and December…with Fairfield and Vacaville not far behind that pace.
Well so far this year, Benicia, Fairfield, Suisun and Vacaville have all seen their inventories of available homes for sale remain pretty close to where they were when 2009 ended.
But Vallejo was a completely different story last week, as its inventory soared — yes that’s Soared with a capital “S”. With a gain of 39 active listings between Jan. 4 and Jan. 11, the increase was almost twice the highest single weekly gain (21) for all of last year.
So when I downloaded the data and saw such a huge one-week increase, Read the rest of this entry »
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Solano County Weekly Real Estate Report: Final Housing Supply Totals For ‘09 Right Here
December 31st, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
Normally, I post my weekly Solano Real Estate Report on Monday or Tuesday, but since New Years Eve falls on a Thursday, I decided to wait until today to post the final home inventory numbers for 2009 — so we can see just how far the supply of homes dropped from start to finish this year.
Today, I’m going to concentrate primarily on the Jan-Dec. totals. So if you want to dissect the raw week-to-week numbers, please be sure to download the full report.
All the housing inventory statistics are there for every week of 2009 and for each of the five cities in our Solano market area. There’s also a separate chart that details the weekly number of pending and closed sales on a week-by-week basis, too.
When you think about where we were a year ago and where Read the rest of this entry »
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