Sacramento Housing in November: Sales up 19%, Active Inventory down 4.8% YoY

Important note: In November 2015, sales were impacted by a regulation change, TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID), so the strong year-over-year increase in many markets last month is because of the weak sales last November.

During the recession, I started following the Sacramento market to look for changes in the mix of houses sold (equity, REOs, and short sales). For a few 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.

This data suggests healing in the Sacramento market and other distressed markets are showing similar improvement.  Note: The Sacramento Association of REALTORS® started breaking out REOs in May 2008, and short sales in June 2009.

In November, total sales were up 19.0% from November 2015, and conventional equity sales were up 22.9% compared to the same month last year.

In November, 4.4% of all resales were distressed sales. This was up from 4.4% last month, and down from 8.3% in November 2015.

The percentage of REOs was at 2.4%, and the percentage of short sales was 2.6%.

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 decreased 4.8% year-over-year (YoY) in October.  This was the nineteenth consecutive monthly YoY decrease in inventory in Sacramento.

Cash buyers accounted for 11.1% of all sales - this has been steadily declining (frequently investors).

Summary: This data suggests a normal market with few distressed sales, and less investor buying - but with limited inventory.