Home 'for sale' signs soar

The standoff between thousands of Sacramento-area homeowners and buyers sharpened in May, as 1,800 new listings added to a mounting inventory of homes for sale in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties, real estate researcher TrendGraphix reported Wednesday.

The newest influx of "for sale" signs contributed to a near-record pileup of 13,146 homes on the market at month's end. Yet May also appeared to strengthen prices in a market that has slumped since a searing five-year housing boom cooled late last summer. Overall, sales of existing homes and median prices both moved up in May.

Real estate analysts call the surge of new inventory the normal springtime rush by sellers eager to put their homes on the market for the traditional summer buying season.

"More houses go on the market in the summer months -- this is the cycle of real estate," said Sara Veliz, a senior accountant at Lyon Real Estate. She said the number of homes coming onto the market jumped 16 percent this year from April to May. Last year it was 19 percent for the same period.

Resales of single-family detached homes rose in five of six counties between April and May, reaching a total of 2,551 escrow closings across the region, according to La Jolla-based property researcher DataQuick Information Systems. Only Sutter County reported fewer sales from the previous month. Total six-county residential home sales, which also included condos and new houses, reached 3,655 during the month.

Median sales prices for the month climbed in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Yuba and Sutter counties while remaining flat in Yolo County, DataQuick reported. Prices fell in Nevada County.

Generally, across the region, May's home sale numbers showed a resumption of rising values seen earlier in the year. But everywhere, median prices remain below their peaks in late summer and fall 2005. The median is the point at which half of the homes sell for more and half for less.

The most-watched indicator among local real estate agents is the supply of existing homes on the market.

"That's the big thing affecting our market more than anything -- inventory, (along with) interest rates," said Richard Swayne, vice president of Sacramento-based Dunnigan Realtors.

Or put another way: "What we have is a lack of inventory priced right," added Michael Lyon, head of Lyon Real Estate. "We have absolutely a ton of overpriced homes."

As the "for sale" signs pile up, buyers like John Daniels of Sacramento and Alison Munro of Vacaville are holding back, waiting for lower prices. They're key players in what experts now call a "buyer's market."

"We're probably going to wait longer than three months just to see," said Daniels, a supervisor for Select Carrier Group, a Sacramento shipper. Daniels is looking at homes in Sacramento's Natomas area.

Munro, a Fairfield teacher considering a move back to her Sacramento hometown, said, "We are looking actively, but I'm kind of watching the prices come down. … We're just waiting it out a little bit longer."

El Dorado Hills-based real estate agent Mark Macarow said buyers are not as much in a rush. Often that means sellers must adjust expectations.

"You reach a certain price and, all of a sudden, the phones start ringing," said Macarow, an agent with RE/MAX Gold.

Altogether, there were 4,621 more homes for sale at the end of May than there were on New Year's Day, according to figures from TrendGraphix. The record number of "for sale" signs in the region was 13,507 in April 1992. That happened amid local military base closings, a statewide recession and unemployment numbers almost double the region's most recent jobless rate of 4.6 percent in April.

Then, approximately 2.5 percent of the region's residential units were for sale. Since, builders have added approximately 210,000 new single-family homes, condos and apartments to the four-county region's housing supply, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. The number of homes for sale today would have to swell to almost 19,000 to equal the impact of the 13,507 for sale in 1992.

As the supply grows and homes sit longer on the market, new-home builders have begun curbing construction starts. The Folsom-based Gregory Group, which tracks the new-housing market, estimates that 20 percent of new homes are finished but have no buyers moving in.