Like many areas, the market in El Dorado Hills is still experiencing some price decline, but the numbers are lower than in many surrounding areas. El Dorado Hills home prices fell 5.4% on a sold price per square foot basis, from $156.31 per square foot last year (i.e., one year ago in February) to $147.92 this February. Coupled with the fact that this year’s crop of homes is 4% smaller than last, a mere 2972 square feet as opposed to last year’s 3096, this has pushed the average sale price down 9.1%, from $483,984 last year to $439,708 this year.
Taking a look now at “the swing” (the difference between sold price and list price), this year the average discount that buyers negotiated was 2.9% of list, or $13,150. To one digit decimal precision, this is the same number for last year. One of the things that sometimes surprises buyers is that the discount they can expect doesn’t change much in a “buyer’s market”. Why is this? Well, it’s because typically the home they’ve selected is already at the low end of the price range compared to comparable sales. Does that mean there isn’t room to negotiate? Not at all, and often an experienced buyer’s agent can still save you many thousands of dollars (sometimes by pointing out subdivisions you might not have even considered).
The number of distressed home sales selling as a percentage of the total in El Dorado Hills has risen from last year’s 57.8% to an “even” two thirds at 66.7%. This February of the 33 homes we and our cooperating brokers sold in El Dorado Hills, 12 were foreclosures, 10 were short sales, and 11 were non-distressed.
As usual for the current market, short sale inventory is high at 10.6% — the bank approval speed of short sales ranges from slow in the best of circumstances to never. Foreclosure inventory, the buyer’s favorite, is low at 2.7%, while non-distressed sales inventory splits the difference at 5.6%.
If you’re interested in distressed properties, as of early March we had 33 bank owned foreclosures available (now down to 25) and 142 short sales (currently up to 145). To check out what we currently have available, visit our foreclosures page and our results page for short sales. To get the very latest news on what’s coming available and where you might get ahead of an upcoming price reduction, give me a call at (916) 997-4086. I look forward to working with you.
