As mentioned in the prior post, home sales were up slightly February from January 2012. According to the Shasta MLS today, we went from a total 195 homes in January, to 212 sold in February. A hopeful trend. We wondered, what prices have homes in the Redding area been selling for?

In January, the average home sold for $179,587; and the Median Price was $143,500.
In February it was $154,203 on average, with a Median Price of $133,000.

We can attest that homes below the Median price level have been in high demand. Obviously, homes above median are selling, but it seems to us that they are on the market longer, and more often drop prices before ultimately selling.

The most expensive home sold in January was this one on El Capitan, for $875,000.

It started out listed just under $1M, and was on the market over a year. It was beauty, and elegantly decorated. We toured it, but never showed it.

The most expensive home sold in February was this one on Calle Camelia, for $760,000.And this one first listed for $1.35M, so is evidence of our theory about high end price drops from the last paragraph. This one dropped nearly half. We were scheduled to show it, but it was scooped up before our buyers could see it. It was really quite nice.

The least expensive home sold in January was $19,900 on Montana. It listed and sold with no price drop in just over 30 days.
The least expensive home sold in February was $28,000 on Silver. It listed for $59K last October, so had to reduce.

No pictures of the least expensive? No.

And we must mention that these statistics are for the entire MLS which includes some homes outside the Greater Redding, and Shasta County area. And we must add that information seen here is deemed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed. © 2012 MLS and FBS.
Prepared by Skip Murphy on Friday, March 09, 2012 8:31 AM

Up a bit. The ink has barely dried on February contracts, so these numbers should be viewed as early. Still, we like to peek.
We use numbers for “Greater Redding,” so include roughly from Lakehead to Lake California, and from Shingletown to Whiskeytown. You can compare this chart to last months in our prior post. Inventory is actually up this month. Here are the numbers behind the chart:

Overall, inventory is down from 2010. We feel it when we’re out showing. You get to the end of a list much quicker. The Northstate is not an infinite market.

We’ve heard a few comments about how the number of homes for sale in the Shasta MLS dropped sharply last month. Today, its around 735 homes for sale in the Redding area.
In fact, the real number of homes for sale hasn’t changed all that much over the last 6 months.We’ve shown this before, and we should have a new chart reflecting February 2012 in a day or two. Shown again here to illustrate that today’s low inventory has been steadily, but not steeply declining. The dotted red line at the top.

So what happened? Well, they changed the rules on the reports. Previously, short sales that had offers in to the bank/lender (Pending) were still reported as Active, swelling the perceived inventory numbers. The theory was that because the bank/lender had not yet agreed to the transaction, that agents should still show the property, and submit backup offers. In reality, we never like to show homes we can’t sell. So the number of “Active” homes was inflated by the large number of short sales in lender limbo. Removing Pendings from the reported number of Active homes didn’t change the housing inventory, only how it was calculated.

There’s much nuance to the discussion of whether that was a good idea. We think it is. The real number of homes for sale in our area is quite low. Of the 735 homes listed today, oops… now 734 since I last looked this morning, only 607 are in Shasta County. Of those, only 261 are at, or under, $200,000. That’s the very popular price point.

So what’s that mean? Inventory is low. So are prices, and more importantly perhaps, so are interest rates. If you’ve been waiting to sell, waiting for demand to pick back up, here we are. We have buyers out there looking, and they don’t have much to look at.