Placerville’s residential sales in November were very sluggish compared to the same time last year, and with interest rates quite low and inventory high, bargain hunters may find this is a good time to get out there and get searching. As we’ll see, however, at least part of this conclusion comes from the limits of the sample, so hang in there for a minute as we go into the details.

Sellers who were successful in getting a buyer dropped their price an average of 12.4% from last year, with the average list price falling from $521,496 to $457,070. The average sale price dropped slightly more — 13.9% — from $514,257 last year to $442,790 this year. That means that on average, last November’s buyer purchased a home at 99% of list price, while this year’s buyer negotiated a somewhat better discount, paying 97% of list (i.e., three percent less than list). The year to year median price dropped most dramatically, 16.2%.

So far so bad, and it gets worse before it gets better. So let’s have a good clean cry now and then cheer up at the end of the article. Unit volume was down 63% from November to November, with twenty-seven units selling last year and ten selling this year. With expireds rising at the same time from twelve to seventeen, the expired to sold ratio now stands at 170%. Another way to put that is that if you had your home on the market in November, the odds against it selling were something like 1.7 to 1.0 (not counting those homes that may have been voluntarily withdrawn).

Because of the oversupply, residential inventory in Placerville is now at 13.4 months, if November’s slow performance is taken as representative (which probably errs on the side of caution and bubble-o-mania). If instead we take the average sales per month over the last year, the inventory numbers look a little less grim, at 7.8 months.

In fact, the inventory numbers shows us one case of how cautious we need to be with the statistical data. Now I admit, most of what we see in Placerville for November is a bubbler’s delight, but also afoot are some other statistical oddities. First, in November we got down to ten units per month selling, meaning our sample is getting small enough to show that same high margin of error that we’ve reported for Amador County. Secondly, there’s some evidence that when adjusted for what the sample really is, the decline in price is not representative of the end of the world. To be sure, the average sale price dropped 13.9% from November to November, but this November’s homes also averaged 11.6% smaller (1943 square feet last year as opposed to 1717 square feet this year). The result is that price per square foot during the same period also dropped, but far less dramatically (2.6%) than average the drop in average price.

So, as the saying goes, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Or if I may try my hand at coining my own phrase: the number you get is the number you want. I’d be inclined to call Placerville in November for the bubblers. But I also feel a certain responsibility to report those areas where the entireity of the numbers tell a different story.

I have high hopes for the adventures of Elite Properties and I am willing to do anything to make it happen…for example….Blogging! I had hoped for more of a response from our fellow realtors and affiliates and their support in our blog-a-thon in which proceeds go to Amador and El Dorado county Food Banks. We will prevail!

I have done a little investigating this morning and it appears that our land sales in Jackson for the last 6 months of 2006 have averaged about 1 a month. Currently, half of the active land listings in Jackson have been on the market for more than 200 days. With this in mind, don’t miss the opportunity to look at the gorgeous 7 plus acres in the Christina Pines sudivision in Jackson. Virtual Tour

aloneOriginally uploaded by rita banerji.

The Dalai Lama once had a wonderful talk about compassion, in which he mentioned how natural it is to feel for another being that’s suffering — such as when you see a fish gasping for air out of water, your first instinct is to throw it back in.

Unless you’re fishing, I guess. But you get the idea. The Dalai Lama doesn’t fish, so I suspect that isn’t what he meant.

So I found this picture, which likely wasn’t taken around here, but it’s reasonable that there’s a little girl about this age in who does live around here. We have some $200, more or less, in $ MATCHING FUNDS $ left (I have to check the offer details, but that’s about what it is).

So for five bucks or ten or what have you, you can sponsor a blogger if you want, and I can practically guarantee you’ll feel better afterwards. In fact, forget practically — I will guarantee it. If you don’t feel better, you don’t have to send in your pledge money. If you do feel better, a little girl or boy about this age will get to eat something.

Here’s another “fish story”

There’s another fish story along the same lines. A great storm strands many fish on the beach. A little boy is walking along the beach, picking up the struggling fish and putting them back in the water.

An old man comes up and says, “Little Boy, this was a terrible storm. There are thousands of fish that were washed ashore. You’ll never get them all. What you’re doing can’t possibly matter.”

The little boy answered, “It matters to the ones I put back.”

Hanan was good enough to help out with our blogathon. For those two readers of mine who might not yet be familiar with Growabrain, although Curbed and others sometimes get more attention, Growabrain is arguably the best real estate blog period, so you should check it out early and often, and to help with that, let’s go blogroll it, shall we? Yep.

I’ve been looking at how well the blogathon isn’t doing, and giving it a lot of thought. Actually it’s more correct to say that it’s had my attention, nagging at me as though the mere fact of explaining it would make its almost utter failure less palpable.

Sure, we’re only four out of fourteen days into it, so maybe the only problem is that the blue fairy godmother of fate has yet to turn on the matter, converting the coarse sow’s ear of this desperate flop into the fine oriental silk of philanthropic victory. Or maybe the blue fairy godmother of fate is just not that into Hunger Blogathons, in which case I could be sitting here waiting for my date to show up until the fifteenth.

Maybe this blog doesn’t have enough reach yet to be credible, so my esteemed colleagues take one look at the PR meter on their Google toolbars and calculate their return as being not worth their time. Blogosphere my eye, more like desperately betting verbiage against the alogorithm in hopes of more escrows. Osphere.

Or maybe it’s just instant karma burning away the unworthy desire to grow this blog. Poetic justice that I didn’t do this blogathon on my more well publicized — and perhaps closer to a lot of hungry people — Sacramento blog.

The other day I was giving the younger of my dogs, Molly, a fairly large pig ear. I thought it was Molly’s turn for the big one, but Molly just turned up her nose at it, so I gave the big one to my older dog, Lucy, and Molly then happily took the smaller treat.

My dogs, it would seem, get it.

So there we are at the heart of the matter at last, I suspect. The elegant superstructure of Web 2.0 is built finally on the flimsiest of foundations imaginable: Human Being 1.0. So-so apes. Gansta rappas. Planet killers. I want my S.U.V.

So here I sit, taking my little place among the hoards of my fellow vacuous, narcissistic scribblers. Monkeys throw their shit on the walls to see what sticks. The twenty-first century calls that activity “Content SEO.”

I wanted to give props and thanks to Maureen Francis over at the MiOklandCounty blog for giving us our first blog roll link and really extending the hand of friendship to try to get some eyeballs over to the hunger blogathon.  She even said hello on my Active Rain Blog.

It also turns out that Maureen is not only Famous, she’s Magnificent as well.  With this in mind I’ve made bold to ask Larry Cragun to come over and be famous, and also to see if he has any interest in making me magnificent.  I do hope he likes the article I sent him, inasmuch as I once asked Brian Buffini if, since I didn’t have time or money to participate in his 100 days to greatness program, if it would be alright to just do 50 days to mediocrity.

No, I never really asked Brian that, but now that you know it’s possible, don’t you want to?

Long before this hunger blogathon began, and I hope long after its author is dead, America’s Second Harvest has been helping those among us who, in the midst of the plenty of the richest land in the nation, simply don’t have enough to eat. I admire these guys, and you should, too.

Response to our own Hunger Blogathon flier has been underwhelming — probably it should be an online pledge form next year. But tell you what — you like online convenience? You like helping others? Sweet, then stand up to clear your butt from your chair, reach in your back pocket for your credit card, take a deep breath and think about what it would be like if it was your own child who hadn’t eaten today, then click here.

Kids, these are professional sales people browbeating their audience under controlled conditions. Do not attempt this at home.

Sally Struthers, eat your heart out.

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.

I just had to use that title once.

I’ll try not to wear it out.

Having just gotten through singing the praises of Jackson’s strong market, we now turn to Ione and paint a much darker picture. I think many of the differences in the two communities also point out what we’ve been saying all along about our Amador County statistics in general — small sample sizes mean results may swing pretty widedly from one sample to the next.

Ten units sold in Ione last November, as opposed to only three this year, which is a fairly huge drop in volume. The low number for this year’s sales in turn feeds back into how we calculate inventory, so with 68 units in inventory we come up with an alarming 22 months worth. (Of course, if 10 units sell next month, that will be down to 6.8 months — so keep your eye on those sample sizes).

The average sold price per square foot dropped 13.8% from November to November, while all other indicators were up. What this means in practice is that this year a buyer spent about as much for a home as last year ($303,840 in November 2005 versus $304,518 in November 2006), but this year’s buyer found his money buying a home that was 16.3% bigger, at 1813 square feet compared to last year’s 1558 square feet.

And with that, I have to turn my attention to El Dorado County rather literally, and go meet a seller there. More blogathon fun when we return.

Sales of residential real estate in Jackson put in a strong showing in November, with at least modest gains in most indicators and fairly modest inventory by recent standards.

This November’s sold homes were bigger than last year, averaging 1914 square feet as opposed to last year’s 1771 square feet. Even adjusted for square footage, however, homes achieved a modest 1.4% increase in price from last year. The average sold price rose more dramatically, of course, from $387,812 last November to $424,866 this November. Unit volume was also up this year, from eight units in November of 2005 to 9 units in November 2006. With 75 active listings, inventory is 8.3 months worth, which is fair to good given the overall market and time of year.

The only bad news in Jackson’s market data were a slight decline in median sale price, from $404,250 last year to $396,500 this year, a 1.9% drop, and a more marked increase in average days on market before a home was sold, up 64.8% from last year’s 88 days to an average this November of 145.