Sacramento Appraisal Blog

I inspected a property in the city of Vallejo today and I’m crunching some numbers right now (as I always do) to get a better look at the overall real estate market. During the course of my neighborhood research, for kicks I thought I would plot all sales in the entire city over the past two years to see if there might be any discernable trend or pattern due to the City of Vallejo filing for bankruptcy on May 23, 2008. The blue dots represent sales and the vertical red line represents the date when bankruptcy was filed.

Let’s be honest, this one scatter graph is not meant to display anything revolutionary about the impact of Vallejo’s bankruptcy. Let’s save that for someone hired to delve into intense research to uncover that kind of information. This is purely recreational graphing out of curiosity. But isn’t it still interesting to take a glimpse at sales?

There is certainly a downward trend in the graph above, but that’s not an uncommon phenomenon for Solano County over the past couple of years, is it? The question becomes though, did the City of Vallejo’s bankruptcy impact the market at all, or is the declining trend simply a byproduct of the real estate market bubble burst and economy? 

Have you seen any tangible evidence that the city’s bankruptcy has negatively impacted home values or perception of Vallejo among buyers? If you are considering purchasing a home, is it a turn-off to you that the City of Vallejo filed for bankruptcy? Or is it no big deal for you? Feel free to comment below.

NOTE: All sales above are based upon information found in BAREIS for single family residential properties under $800,000. There were very few sales above $800,000, so it seemed most relevant to disregard a few higher sales because they were outliers.

www.SacramentoAppraisalBlog.com A Trend Graph of Vallejo Since City Bankruptcy