The New York Times says there are signs of recovery in the Sacramento real estate market. Well, if you read it in the Times, it must be true, right? :) Part of the basis for this claim is the fact that home buyers and investors are fighting over the few morsels left on the market. Inventory is low. But it's been low for months. Sacramento home buyers and investors have been going neck-to-neck over the choicest homes for months as well.
None of this is news. Except to those first-time home buyers who are still looking at the list price of a home and wondering how low they should go. Those are the buyers whose offers keep getting rejected.
The number of foreclosures is still rising; however, the inventory is not available for sale. Where is it? Some of those bank-owned homes are sold privately in bulk to investors. Some banks are renting them out, waiting for prices to improve. Others are sitting empty as weeds multiply in the front yard.
Come June, the state of California is initiating a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures, which will most likely simply delay the inevitable. The question is when will we receive this tsunami of foreclosures? Nobody seems to have the answer to that.
The fact remains that often the hardest hit markets are the first to recover.
The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available at Amazon.com
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento Real Estate Agent
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