Are you familiar with the “Woodlake” neighborhood in Sacramento? It’s in the “Del Paso” area just south of Arden Way in the 95815 zip code. When hearing “Del Paso” or “North Sacramento,” certain stigmas often come to mind, but when scrolling through pictures of the Woodlake neighborhood below, there’s actually a hint of “Land Park” or “Curtis Park” in terms of style and design (or is it just me?). 

As you can see, the Woodlake neighborhood (outlined in blue) is located in the southern end of the Del Paso area just above Highway 160 and below Arden Way. Did you know this neighborhood was there?

Click on some images below to get a get a feel for the Woodlake neighborhood. I snapped these photos on a rainy day after inspecting a Woodlake house for an appraisal. I’d love to hear your impressions. What do you think?

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If you have any real estate appraisal, valuation consulting, or property tax appeal needs, contact me at 916.595.3735, www.LundquistCompany.com or via Facebook.

I’m working on an appraisal right now in an area of the 95815 zip code of Sacramento that has had some crime challenges lately. There have been multiple murders within the neighborhood boundaries over the past year. It’s sad of course to see this type of activity in any area, yet always interesting from a real estate standpoint to research neighborhood happenings and make sure to understand what is going on in the local market. Heavy crime might impact market value, right?

Honestly, I find it kind of earie to google street names in this particular neighborhood and read more about specific murders. There are also online local news videos at my disposal too. On top of that, I can scroll through the Sacramento Police Department’s Twitter account and find at least one tweet that describes a situation that happened very close to the subject property.

If you live in an unincorporated portion of Sacramento County or the City of Rancho Cordova, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department has a valuable online crime mapping tool. For reference, I used this tool to do some research near the corner of Watt & Arden in the Arden-Arcade area of Sacramento. I included a snippet of the past 90 days of crime within one mile of this intersection based on the Sheriff’s crime mapping tool. Each icon on the map stands for something, whether vandalism, burglary, assault, etc… Check out this crime map tool and let me know what you think.

How have you seen crime impact a community or real estate? On another note, where do you get your crime information from? Local news? Newspaper? Social media?

Do you remember several years ago in the Sacramento area when duplexes were selling for $400,000-$500,000+ like it was nothing? Well, the housing bubble burst and the residential-income market came crashing down along with everything else.

The graph below displays all sales in Sacramento County for duplex properties. I know, Sacramento County is an enormous territory, but sometimes viewing large ares helps to see an overall trend.

What do you notice when looking at all duplex sales in Sacramento county? It seems the bulk of sales are well under $300,000, and that the median sales price level easily lost $200,000 or more over the past three years. Ouch. There certainly are an enormous portion of sales between $100,000 to $200,000 too, aren’t there? 

Let’s take a closer look at a specific area in Sacramento by viewing sales in North Sacramento in the 95815 and 95838 zip codes. No, that’s not a ski slope, but a trend graph of all duplex sales.

It’s interesting to see what looks like two markets at hand above: One market below $100,000 and another market hovering between $150,000-$175,000. Market segmentation (bifurcation) is common depending on condition, location, size, or even the nature of the sale – short sale vs foreclosure vs typical arms-length transaction.

One more. What’s happened in the city of Rancho Cordova’s duplex market over the past thirty six months? No surprises. It looks similar to the graphs above.

When it comes to duplexes in Rancho Cordova and surrounding areas of Sacramento, the majority of recent sales are reo properties (bank-owned). For example, in a recent duplex appraisal I just completed in a Sacramento neighborhood, 84% of all duplex sales over the past 12 months within this neighborhood were REO sales and 10% of all sales were Short Sales. It’s not an easy market when 94% of all sales carry some level of distress.

Contact me at 916-595-3735 or ryan@lundquistcompany.com if you have any questions.

www.SacramentoAppraisalBlog.com The Bursting of the Duplex Market in Sacramento