Santa Cruz Real Estate Sales Data – April 2008

Blog Post

Well, the numbers are in, and we’re looking better. For those of you who are really interested in knowing what’s going on with real estate sales in Santa Cruz county, I want to remind you that I have a great page on my web site that gives you all kinds of ways to look at Santa Cruz Real Estate Sales Data. Also, I offer a monthly newsletter which offers an analysis of what the numbers mean, and this month’s edition just hit the inboxes of subscribers.

K_tony_thumbs_up.jpg

OK, maybe the numbers aren’t grrrrrrrreat! like our friend Tony the Tiger would say. But they’re certainly better than what we’ve seen lately. What’s the scoop? For Santa Cruz county as a whole, sales and prices of single-family homes rebounded nicely in April compared to March. County-wide, there were 103 sales in April ’08, compared to just 70 in March ’08. Also, the median price of those homes rose 6.1% from March.

Comparing one month to the month before it isn’t a terribly useful exercise, however. After all, we are approaching the peak selling season, so it’s no surprise that sales numbers are up. However, it’s a very good thing that sales numbers aren’t down – that would be most unwelcome news.

Change Happens

It is, perhaps, more interesting to compare April ’08 to April ’07 – what do we see there? There, we see that the median price (again, county-wide) of single-family residences is down 11.8%, and in April last year, 132 homes were sold – so about 25% fewer homes were sold this April. The numbers are considerably worse for condos, but so few condos were sold (just 19 county wide) that it’s difficult to really gauge what’s going on in that market price-wise.

One thing I’d like to point out here is what’s happening in Watsonville. There is an enormous amount of pending home sales in Watsonville – homes that are under contract, but the sales have yet to close. Many/most of these homes are foreclosure properties – there are some staggering bargains to be had. It will be interesting to see what happens to the sales numbers and median prices when these sales close.

I really encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter. I’ve got an interesting article in there this month about the problem with the foreclosure numbers – things are perhaps not so bad as they seem. Of course, if you are one of the many unfortunate homeowners contributing to the swelling statistics of foreclosure numbers, if things get really bad, you can always just walk away.

Go to the Head of the Class

Check out this article next

Santa Cruz's Pink Man Gone Missing

Santa Cruz's Pink Man Gone Missing

Imagine my dismay when I browsed over to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and saw this front page news: [From Pacific Avenue staple seems to have…

Read Article
About the Author
Seb Frey
Seb Frey helps long-time Bay Area homeowners make their next move easily the next one yet. If you're looking for a minimum of hassle, maximum net cash on sale, and certain results, contact Seb today.