Sacramento Housing in December: Sales down 8% YoY, Active Inventory up 8% YoY

Note: I'm going to retire the graph below.  The purpose was to see when the market shifted from distressed sales to more conventional sales.  For several years, not much changed. But in 2012 and 2013, we saw some significant changes with a dramatic shift from distressed sales to more normal equity sales.  Now almost all of the sales are conventional equity sales.

Note: The Sacramento Association of REALTORS® started breaking out REOs in May 2008, and short sales in June 2009.

In December, total sales were down 8.0% from December 2016, and conventional equity sales were down 3.8% compared to the same month last year.

In December, 2.9% of all resales were distressed sales. This was up from 2.3% last month, and down from 4.8% in December 2016.

Sacramento Realtor Press Release: 2017 closes with less sales, less inventory, higher sales price

December recorded 1,408 closed escrows, a .9% increase from November(1,396 sales) and an 8% decrease from last year (1,530 sales).
...
Active Listing Inventory decreased, dropping 28.9% from 2,216 to 1,575. The Months of Inventory also decreased, dropping 31.3% from 1.6 Months to 1.1. A year ago the Months of inventory was 1 and Active Listing Inventory stood at 1,458 listings (7.4% below the current figure).
emphasis added

Here are the statistics.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the percent of REO sales, short sales and conventional sales.

There has been a sharp increase in conventional (equity) sales that started in 2012 (blue) as the percentage of distressed sales declined sharply.

Active Listing Inventory for single family homes increased 8.0% year-over-year (YoY) in November.  This is the third consecutive month with a YoY inventory increase, following 29 consecutive months with a YoY decrease in inventory in Sacramento.

Cash buyers accounted for 12.9% of all sales - this has been generally declining (frequently investors).

Summary: This data suggests a normal market with few distressed sales, and less investor buying - but with limited inventory.  Keep an eye on inventory - this might be a change in trend.

from Calculated Risk http://ift.tt/2mhKPDy