More than 3,700 Sacramento-area buyers claimed keys to new and existing houses in May, the strongest sales month in four years, a La Jolla researcher reported Thursday.
Sales prices also continued to drift upward. Sacramento scored a fifth straight month in which prices beat the same time last year, La Jolla-based MDA DataQuick reported.
Sacramento County's median price for existing homes and new houses combined is $182,000 - 4 percent higher than in May 2009. Median is that point where half sell for more and half for less.
The latest numbers show that a spring homebuying surge that started in March has strengthened in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. Altogether, 3,716 homes changed hands in the region. About 9 percent were new houses, DataQuick reported.
But the region is also seeing a steady rise in for-sale signs. At month's end, 7,424 - the most in a year - dotted the streets and roads of El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, Sacramento researcher TrendGraphix reported.
Distress also continues to haunt the capital region. An estimated 12 percent of mortgages in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties are delinquent, in the foreclosure process or tied to a bank repo, says Orange County housing analyst CoreLogic. Bank repos still accounted for 47.6 percent of sales in Sacramento County, said DataQuick.
But those who have money and jobs are buying, says Sacramento real estate agent Ted DeFazio of Ellington Properties. He brokered three of the region's closed escrows in May. DeFazio confirmed that a statewide trend of fewer bank repos and more higher-end sales is also happening locally.
"I sold two houses in the $500,000 range in May," he said. Those sales, growing as sellers become more realistic about values, are tugging the county's median toward $200,000. Sacramento County prices bottomed out at $160,000 in February 2009.
Prices are also edging up for cheaper houses. Mike Lyon, head of Lyon Real Estate, cited a 15 percent rise in the price per square foot for houses under $200,000 the past year.
DeFazio said higher-end sellers are proving more willing to deal this year, and buyers "are getting into neighborhoods they wouldn't have been able to afford back when."
The numbers reveal a sizable number of first-time buyers who started sales contracts before April 30 to collect a federal tax credit of $8,000. Many are also staking claim to California's first-time buyer tax credit of up to $10,000. Those became available May 1.
More than 15,000 first-time California buyers have applied for the state tax credit, which is now 80 percent claimed, according to the state Franchise Tax Board.
In addition to the tax credit, buyers are attracted by interest rates that have remained below 5 percent for six weeks.
Senior loan consultant Brent Wilson, of Comstock Mortgage in Sacramento, said most home loans are going to "first-time homebuyers and investors in that more moderate price range."
According to DataQuick, investors accounted for 25.4 percent of Sacramento County sales. Buyers paying cash constituted 31 percent of sales.
--Call The Sacramento Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102 or email him at [email protected]. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.