Placer and El Dorado Inventory of Homes for Sale

My theme for the next few days is the number of homes available for sale and the increasing numbers we experienced in May. Yesterday I talked about the four county area and today I will look at Placer and El Dorado counties. Tomorrow it will be Sacramento and Yolo counties.

During May the increase of homes on the market in Placer County increased by 470 to 2,979 available for sale. Having more homes listed for sale than sold, expired or taken off the market increased the number of homes for sale by 18 percent from the previous month and is the largest single growth month of the year. The year-to-date growth in inventory is 1,147 which is a 62 percent increase for the year end 2005 number.

In El Dorado County we also see May as the month with the largest increase in homes available for sale. The number increased 264 to a total of 1,593 homes for sale. This is almost 20 percent growth for the month and the total is up over 43 percent for the year.

It is not surprising that more homes are listed than sold during May as we enter the busy season in real estate. The overall level of inventory clearly indicates we have moved from a sellers market to a buyers market. Although I do not have the May 2005 inventory levels they were significantly lower than the current inventory levels. In April of 2005 there were 594 homes for sale in El Dorado compared to almost 1,600 today. In Placer, at the end of April 2005 there were 1,070 home for sale compared to almost 3,000 today. An important indicator of how our market is going to fare this year will be seen in the inventory levels over the next two months. Typically we would expect to see growth of inventory slow and start decline over that time period.