Housing prices continue to skyrocket in foothills
Auburn/Newcastle median price jumps 15.6 percent for month of October
By Chris Somerville
Journal Real Estate Editor
The median price of homes in Auburn/Newcastle hit $381,500 in October 2003, a jump of 15.6 percent from September?s median price of $330,000. The average home sale price was $425,775 up 10.6 percent from last month?s average of $384,969.
For all of Placer County, the median price rose .75 percent to $332,500 from $330,000 in September. This October?s median price is 14.7 percent higher that October 2002?s median of $290,000. The total dollar volume of homes sold in October stood at more than $161 million, down 11 percent from last month?s record of more than $182 million.
?Normally this is a slow time of year for real estate,? said Placer County Association of Realtors President Alicia Higgins. ?But there are buyers out there. A lot of it has to do with what is happening in the Bay Area, which is heating up again. When prices rise there, we tend to get more buyers who are looking to relocate to Placer County.?
Nikki Holmes, a Realtor with HomeTown Realtors, attributed the sharp increase in median price to the dwindling inventory and slight increase in interest rates.
?Because the inventory is low there is a sense of the need to move now with some buyers,? she said. ?Also in our area for what we consider an entry-level home the price has climbed, making some people think that it is now or never to buy a home.?
There were 976 Placer County resale homes for sale at the end of October, a decrease of 5.4 percent from the 1,032 listings in September, and a 15.3 percent drop from the 1,152 houses on the market a year ago.
In Auburn/Newcastle there were 153 homes listed for sale up from the 152 listed in September, yet down from the 176 listed in October 2002.
?Right now we have relatively low inventory levels,? Higgins said. ?When inventory is low and there are a lot of people looking to buy, the median prices edge up.?
A total of 403 resale home sales closed escrow in October, down 14.4 percent from the 471 that sold in September. However, this October?s sales were up more than 13 percent from the 356 resale homes sold last October.
?I hate to make predictions about the future,? Higgins said. ?But because the Bay Area is heating up with higher price ranges, more people are looking to move. We should see a trickle down effect from this in Placer County over the next few months.?
In the Auburn/Newcastle area, the majority of home sales were of three-bedroom homes, which compromised 52.4 percent, or 22, of the 42 homes sold in October. The average price of a three-bedroom home was $390,031, up from $371,429 in September. Four-bedroom homes made up 38 percent of resale sales for the month with the average price of a four-bedroom homing running $509,494, a drop from September?s average of $569,719.
Sales and prices varied greatly among Placer County?s many communities. During October the greatest number of sales occurred in Roseville with 159 sales. Rocklin accounted for 75 sales; Lincoln had 46 sales; Auburn/Newcastle had 42 sales; Granite Bay had 36 sales; the Meadow Vista area had 26 sales; Loomis/Penryn had 11 sales and Foresthill had seven sales.
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