Special offer

Truckee CA, Tahoe Donner Feb 2011 Home Sales

By
Real Estate Agent with Allison James Estates & Homes, Truckee, CA

Tahoe Donner Homes - Single Family Home Sales – February 2011


The following Figure shows Tahoe Donner Single Family Home activity from Jan 2008 through February 2011.

The data is obtained from the Tahoe MLS published data. Note, this data is for single family homes only – contact me for data on Tahoe Donner Condos or data for other Truckee areas.

Tahoe Donner is a great area to study for market activity since it is has over 5000 homes and therefore presents a large database for meaningful statistical analysis. Home prices vary from roughly $300K to over $1.5M and ages range from over 30 years old to brand new.

When trying to interpret  change in prices over the last few years several factors should be considered instead of just dividing the monthly total homes sales gross $ total by the number of units sold and saying prices are down by x % - doing so is not giving buyers and sellers a true picture of the market. A couple of major considerations are that higher priced new home construction is obviously way down in the Truckee area (except for Martis Camp) and until 2010, lenders had been making it very difficult to obtain Jumbo loans required for higher priced homes – requiring cash only purchases in the past year or so which could have adversely affected the number of larger homes sold. Another very significant factor is the increasing amount of distressed home sales (Short Sales and REO’s). REO’s especially tend to be sold in generally poor condition which significantly lowers the market value.

 

Tahoe Donner Homes

Tahoe Donner Single Family Home Sales

 

Tahoe Donner Homes - Closings


Single Family home closings in February ’11 were 13 homes, up from 9 last month. Note that sales in Tahoe Donner are extremely seasonal and year to year comparisons are significant to get a valid picture of sales activity. Looking at the above graph Feb sales this year are consistent with the last few years.


Tahoe Donner Homes – Inventory


(# of Single Family listings) was 90 listings at the end of Feb.  When you consider we have approximately 5000 single family homes in Tahoe Donner inventory continues to be low -  1.8% of the homes in TD. This low inventory is obviously a positive sign for the continued good health of the Tahoe Donner Market and could lead to higher home pricing.

 

Tahoe Donner Homes – Days on Market (DOM)


Average Days on market (DOM) decreased to 105 days from 175 last month and 78 the month before. Looking at the above graph, 105 days is getting closer to the average which is close to 80 days or so. As mentioned last month, I think the higher DOM is due to low inventory resulting in sales of homes that have been on the market for an extended period.

 

Tahoe Donner - New Home Sales & Lot Sales


Regarding new home sales, there were 2 new home sales last month.  We have seen a slowdown in buildable lot sales and don’t expect this to pick up until spring. The low inventory of saleable homes is obviously a good sign for builders and may spark lot sales in the spring and summer of this year.

 

tahoe Donner Homes

Tahoe Donner Single Family Home Median and Average Home Price

 

 

 

Tahoe Donner Distressed Sales

There were 3 REO’s sold  last month as well as 1 Court approved sale. So we are seeing 4/13 distressed sales or 31%.




Tahoe Donner Homes - Average and Median Prices

Average and median prices decreased a bit this month. This is a result of the relatively high percentage of distressed sales.


Since we are getting some recent new home activity and financing has loosened up a bit and with the low inventory,  one can expect that non-distressed home prices should not see much additional downward pressure in 2011. This is another good sign of a strong market because prices tend to be holding in even without a significant number of more expensive new homes coming on the market. For sellers, the low inventory is great and for buyers don’t be too hopeful that prices will drop if you wait.

Sold to Ask Price


The sold to last listing price for Jan was 95%. February sold to last listed price was 96%. So, when you are buying or selling keep this average number in mind.

Price per Sq Ft


The average price per square foot for January was $259. February average price per sq ft was $243.

February was interesting in that 2 brand new homes sold  $310 and $327 per sq ft and  3 REO’s sold for $111, $167 and $242 per sq ft. There was also 1 Court Approved sale for $173 per sq ft.

The net-net is that the average price per sq ft didn’t change that much from Jan. due to the new home sales.

 

I hope this data, presented in this form was useful to you. MLS data is available and I encourage the buyer or seller to study the data and arrive at their own conclusions before making a buy or sell decision. Contact me if you would like to see the “raw” data.

Gary LaBelle

Chase International, Truckee, CA

 

 

Comments (0)