How to Win a Cross County Real Estate Trivia Contest
Posted by John Lockwood on April 24th, 2007
If you want to win a real estate trivia contest, here’s a tip: when it comes time to pick your team mates, if there’s a real estate nerd in the room, pick him.
Maybe I spent too much time in math classes in high school. Believe me: if I could have escaped earlier, I would have. Let’s face it, my goal at the time was to chase more high school girls and engage in other sorts of high school high jinks.
Nevertheless, I hung in there on the math classes until my junior year, and somehow between that and watching too many Star Trek episodes, I became a nerd. No, that’s not a picture of me at the right, but at one time, it certainly could have been. I do think that that’s a really cool tee shirt, and the software box in the back in the original cinches it.
Again, that’s not me over on the right.
The truth is far worse.
One of the downsides of being a nerd is that you tend to get excited whenever you get a new idea for an article with numbers in it. Let’s face it, pocket calculators are a sort of gold standard of nerd-identification tools — or in an earlier generation, slide rules. The flip side of that is that we’re good at trivia contests.
Today’s numerological infatuation appears below, and starts with the basic question, how are the California Counties of Amador, El Dorado, Sacramento, and Placer doing in terms of their residential real estate sales for the first quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter of last year.
So, how about some Trivia Contest questions:
- Which of our four area California counties actually experienced appreciation in the average sold price during the Q1 2006 / Q1 2007 period? Hint: Jaime Boling-Puebla lives there.
- Which of our four area California counties actually experienced suffered the biggest drop in unit volume during the Q1 2006 / Q1 2007 period? Hint: The Sacramento River runs through it.
- Which of our four area California counties actually experienced the lowest decline in the median price of residential real estate during the Q1 2006 / Q1 2007 period, but was second only to Placer County in the drop in average price per square foot? Hint: Marlene and Greg’s restaurant.
- Which county wins the prize for the most gentle drop in average price per square foot during the period in question. Hint: my house is there.
Anyway, I’m not sure what you needed hints for — the numbers are below and you can just read them off the table. But maybe you did the right thing and escaped from math class early…
| Amador County | q1 - 2006 | q1 - 2007 | change | |||||||||
| median sold price | $317,500 | $311,000 | -2.0% | |||||||||
| average sold price | $304,839 | $311,365 | 2.1% | |||||||||
| average square feet | 1473 | 1630 | 10.7% | |||||||||
| average price per square foot | $207 | $191 | -7.7% | |||||||||
| average days on market | 113 | 178 | 57.5% | |||||||||
| total units sold | 112 | 100 | -10.7% | |||||||||
| El Dorado County | q1 - 2006 | q1 - 2007 | change | |||||||||
| median sold price | $490,000 | $462,750 | -5.6% | |||||||||
| average sold price | $537,879 | $519,238 | -3.5% | |||||||||
| average square feet | 2146 | 2200 | 2.5% | |||||||||
| average price per square foot | $251 | $236 | -5.8% | |||||||||
| average days on market | 71 | 84 | 18.3% | |||||||||
| total units sold | 459 | 440 | -4.1% | |||||||||
| Placer County | q1 - 2006 | q1 - 2007 | change | |||||||||
| median sold price | $465,000 | $430,000 | -7.5% | |||||||||
| average sold price | $531,965 | $508,119 | -4.5% | |||||||||
| average square feet | 2110 | 2156 | 2.2% | |||||||||
| average price per square foot | $252 | $236 | -6.5% | |||||||||
| average days on market | 59 | 76 | 28.8% | |||||||||
| total units sold | 983 | 869 | -11.6% | |||||||||
| Sacramento County | q1 - 2006 | q1 - 2007 | change | |||||||||
| median sold price | $360,000 | $345,000 | -4.2% | |||||||||
| average sold price | $397,757 | $381,237 | -4.2% | |||||||||
| average square feet | 1629 | 1693 | 3.9% | |||||||||
| average price per square foot | $244 | $225 | -7.8% | |||||||||
| average days on market | 50 | 64 | 28.0% | |||||||||
| total units sold | 3614 | 2853 | -21.1% | |||||||||