Real estate Spring fever is very real. Let me show you a couple of graphs today so we can put our finger on how the Sacramento market normally behaves in March.
Sales Volume Growth: As you can see, over the past thirteen years there have always been more sales in March compared with February. Why? Because this is when Spring fever tends to kick into high gear – regardless of whether the market has been increasing or declining in value. Remember of course the uptick in sales volume in March is really the result of pending sales from January & February (we’ve had lots of pending sales lately in Sacramento).
How much of an increase are we talking about? The percentage increase of sales volume from February to March in Sacramento County has varied from year to year, but is usually above 20%. Sometimes there were as many as 55% more sales from month to month, but the increase was as low as 11.5% in 2009. The past two years have seen a fairly mild launch into March as sales volume from February only increased by 16-22%. For some context, there were 967 single family detached sales last month in Sacramento County and there were just above 450 sales during the first 15 days of March. There are currently almost 2400 pending sales in MLS, which is a huge number. If sales volume in March is going to be considered “normal” compared to the past two years, we will need to see between 1121 to 1179 sales this month.
Questions: What are you seeing out there in the market? Is Spring fever alive and well in the niches you serve? Why do you think sales volume has been more stagnant so far this year?
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