It’s interesting to see the sales history of a 4-plex subdivision in South Sacramento. There are 30 units off 24th Street in the Meadowview area and only 3 out of 30 units have not transferred in the past 4-5 years. Or in other words, 90% of units have sold in recent years. The purple dots below represent sales over the past 3 years and sales beyond that were labeled accordingly.

What does this tells us? This shows me how much turnover there has been since the bubble burst. For example, one unit sold for $560,000 in 2006 and then resold in 2011 for $155,000. It used to be really difficult to pick up a fourplex under $400,000, but that’s not the case anymore. Also, I’m reminded of investment strategy as well as risk. Some investors make purchases and then sit on them for the long haul before reselling, whereas others are looking to purchase and then resell in a relatively short time period.

Mistakes Investors Make: By the way, here is a video I did with Sacramento real estate broker Joel Wright on mistakes investors sometimes make when purchasing real estate. I think we saw some of the mistakes Joel mentioned

Holes in a Fourplex: I inspected one of these units years ago and it was an odd situation since there were actually large holes in the walls of each unit big enough to let me access the entire fourplex. I could simply make my way through each hole to get to the next attached unit. This was actually a bit on the creepy side though since the property was powerless, stripped and clearly had a problem with squatters.

Was it still four units or just one big unit? 

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

I’m doing some research in the Meadowview area of South Sacramento right now, and I wanted to share a trend graph. Check out the past three years of sales for all properties south of Meadowview Road, east of Freeport Blvd, west of Detroit Blvd, and north of vacant land (excluding newer construction built in the past ten years – that’s really a different market despite being located in the same boundaries).

Based on the graph above, when do you think a wave of foreclosures hit the market in the past three years? You got it right. The market was really hurting during the last quarter of 2008 and the first couple quarters of 2009. There is evidence that the market was already struggling in 2007, but the decline really went into high gear in the latter part of 2008. This release of the foreclosure floodgates caused a hefty and quick decline in property value as can be seen above. You can see also that the market has since since experienced some recovery. In my opinion, beyond inventory decreasing, one of the things that has helped to shape property value over the past couple years in this neighborhood is investors purchasing and flipping properties. There have been an enormous amount of flips in this area.

If you have any questions, let me know. You can give me a call at 916.595.3735, email me, or comment below.

I wanted to give you a little tour of a dark boarded fixer-upper house in South Sacramento. Honestly, sometimes it feels a bit creepy to inspect houses like this because utilities are off and every window and door is boarded with plywood. You never know what or who might be lurking in the darkness, right? 

As always, I had permission from my client to shoot and share video. I take client confidentiality very seriously for every appraisal I do, and I never share information on my blog or elsewhere that is confidential.

Let me know if you have any questions. Call me at 916.595.3735, send me an email, or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

What do you think of the video?

What has the housing market been doing? Are property values in Sacramento going down? I’ve done quite a bit of appraisal work in South Sacramento lately (I even have an inspection in the Meadowview area today), and over the past several months I’ve noticed a trend downward in property value in South Sacto and some other local areas too. What’s going on? Well, during the past 120 days we’ve seen inventory increase, the federal tax credit expire, and the beginning of the Fall season too, which is traditionally a bit slower. With all these factors at hand, competition has increased lately in various niches and the spike upward we saw in the beginning of 2010 is beginning to fade. Have a look at the screencast below where I talk through some graphs I made for a particular neighborhood.

Let me know if you have any questions. Comment below, send an email, give me a call at 916.595.3735 or catch me on Facebook. If you work in real estate, what are you seeing the neighborhoods you work in most often?

I’m doing some research for a duplex in South Sacramento. I thought readers would be interested to see a trend graph of all sales over the past twelve months for 2-4 unit properties (duplex, triplex, fourplex) within the South Sacramento & Fruitridge market area. It’s amazing to see how low prices have come down. In 2005, for example, something would have been sincerely wrong to see a residential-income property selling anywhere near $100,000 (or below). For reference, 67% of the sales below were REO and 19% were Short Sales.

What do you see? Also, how have you seen the decline in property value impact rents in the Sacramento area? 

It’s interesting to compare median price levels from one year ago to today’s median price levels. In many areas we have seen a definite increase in property value. What does this mean? What is fueling this trend? I used some data from a South Sacramento neighborhood in the video below to highlight this very phenomenon. If you don’t see the video in your email subscription or RSS, click HERE.

I took a photo of a “McMansion” today in South Sacramento. This house is currently for sale and is a whopping 3,293 square feet in the middle of a neighborhood of mostly single-story 1100-1400 square foot homes (with 3 or 4 bedrooms). It looks like this one may have actually been 1607 square feet originally, so it was already on the upper end of gross living area for the neighborhood, but now it has grown to over twice its original size. This house weighs in now as a 6 bedroom / 3 bathroom property (with a 3-car garage). What do you think?