Housing market shows signs of ‘waking up’ for spring

By Mike Hazlip–
The regional housing market is showing some positive signs after months of little movement, according to an area real estate appraiser.

In a Jan. 30 article on his Sacramento Appraisal Blog, Appraiser Ryan Lundquist describes sellers as having been “Frozen. Stuck in place. Not moving,” but notes that January’s market data shows a “flicker of hope” that sellers are finally beginning to “thaw out.”

“Right now the market is waking up for the season as we are starting to see more competition for the spring, larger homes are starting to list, properties are experiencing a higher percentage of multiple offers, and it’s taking less time to sell,” Lundquist said in an email to The Sentinel on Tuesday. “These are all the things we would expect to see in the spring, and it’s what’s been happening lately.”

The region as a whole saw an uptick of about 15% more listings in January 2024, compared with last January, Lundquist said, although noting Citrus Heights sales have been more stagnant.

“The number of new listings and sales in Citrus Heights was pretty much even with one year ago with 47 new listings in January 2024 compared to 48 new listings in January 2023,” he said, while noting the smaller sample size of Citrus Heights means he “wouldn’t say a different trend is happening in the city.”

Lundquist also described the price point in Citrus Heights as “very competitive” for first-time home buyers, noting that 75% of pending contracts in the past month have had multiple offers. Asked about an uptick in listings with a pool in the city, he said 19 out of the 82 single-family listings on the market in Citrus Heights have a pool, as of Feb. 13, which is up from the typical 16-17% of listings having a pool.

“In a market with high monthly mortgage payments, buyers have grown picky about what they are purchasing, so a house that checks all the boxes is something many buyers seek,” Lundquist said, noting that built-in pools are a hot commodity for buyers. “And a pool is simply one of those boxes.”

Regionally, he said more sellers are starting to enter the market, but cautioned that 2023 was one of the lowest in decades, making this year the second lowest.

“In short, the number of new listings in January was still down 42 percent from the pre-2020 normal, so the number of listings missing in action is still glaring,” he said.

The median price for a single-family detached home in Citrus Heights this year is up by just over eight percent, from $460,000 in 2023 to $499,000 in 2024, Lundquist said. However, the average price is only 4.4 percent higher, he said.

The median price in real estate indicates the middle value of sorted sale prices, offering a more stable benchmark unaffected by extremes, whereas the average price is the sum of all sale prices divided by the number of sales, which can be skewed by very high or low values.

Just over 40 percent of January 2024 homes sold above the original list price, while 48 percent sold below the list price, according to Lundquist. The remaining sales were at the original list price.
Of the nine counties Lundquist highlighted in the Sacramento region, seven had a positive change in sales volume for 2024. Two counties, Sutter and Solano, saw a negative change.

“Far from normal volume, but hopefully a little more,” Lundquist wrote on his blog, offering his outlook on 2024. In layman’s terms he said “the market sucked last year, but hopefully it will suck a little less this year.”