Sacramento Housing Inventory is Down

The trend is clear; we are not going to be seeing the normal buildup of inventory of homes in the Sacramento real estate market this year. Normally starting in late February or early March the number of homes coming on the market is faster than sales so inventory of available homes increases until August. Going into the spring, inventory was already high but instead of increasing it has actually declined. As of June 9, according to HousingTracker, there were 14,670 homes on the market in the Sacramento area. This level of inventory is down 4.2 percent in the past three months and down 11.5 percent from six months ago. Again this is particularly noteworthy that the decline is happening during a time of year when we would expect to see inventory growing.

The decline in inventory is a direct result of more homes being sold than houses being put on the market. Yes, sales are up but I also believe there are homeowners who, although they would like to sell are holding off until they see if the market will improve.

In the latest report from HousingTracker, the median asking price of homes on the market was $305,000. This is down $2,000 from the week before but holding level from a month ago. Compared to six months ago the median asking price is down almost 10 percent and off 23.4 percent from a year ago. If inventory continues to decline there will be some pressure on prices to increase but I am not making any predictions in this area as I think it will be mid-2009 before we may see any firming of prices and some balance in the market.