HOPE Flyer    Are you looking to buy a home in Amador or El Dorado counties? We are holding a workshop to help you prepare yourself for the home buying process,  on Saturday March 10th from 9am-1pm at Placer Title in Jackson, you will have the opportunity to talk with lenders, Amador County Realtors, Title & Escrow officers, and receive assistance in understanding your credit.  Please call or e-mail Bridget at Bridget@BridgetSells.com  (530) 306-9111 reservations or required. We will have a list of homes in various price ranges in areas such as: Plymouth, Ione, Sutter Creek, Jackson, Pine Grove, Mt Aukum, Fairplay, and River Pines.

Like Ione (see last post), Pine Grove buyers this November bought a house that was significantly bigger than last year’s buyers, on average. In fact, at 1973 square feet, this year’s average Pine Grove home was 18.8% bigger than last year’s average of 1,660, so even though the average sale price was 6.8% higher ($442,500 this year compared to $385,000 last year), the sold price per square foot was down 26%, from $237 to $213.

Inventory in Pine Grove is quite low by current market standards, at only 6.625 months. I suspect — but this is pure guesswork at this point and not based on any research, so take a large grain of salt wit this — that the low inventory we’re finding in Pine Grove and other local markets results from the high amount of owner-occupied units relative to other markets. In other words, part of what’s driving the supply side in the Sacramento market and elsewhere is speculators dumping their “stock certificates” (as one caller put it recently). But so far that’s a hypothesis at best.

If indeed the unit volume is large enough to generalize, it was up slightly this year, with eight units selling in Pine Grove as compared to seven last year. Days on market, on the other hand, are up, from 118 last year to 149 this year.