Rachel Medina and I receiving the 2022 YAR Affiliates of the Year from Don Sharp
I’m grateful to my friends at the Yolo Association of Realtors for naming me, along with Rachel Medina, the 2022 Affiliates of the Year for the association. Sharing this with Rachel, on the same night my friends and colleagues Don Sharp and Francisco Jimenez were named 20222 Realtors of the Year, made the recognition special.
I spent much of last year in presentations sharing photos of my favorite mountains since the local markets had clearly peaked. Here’s hoping I can share valley photos in 2023….
Here’s hoping I can retire peaks from my market presentations and start sharing valleys
It’s tough to be a renter in the Sacramento market now. Per the US Census Bureau, the Q1 2022 rental vacancy rate dropped to 3.0%. Good luck to anyone trying to find a home to rent.
For my appraiser friends: will this pass an FHA inspection? image copywrite Joe Lynch
Hey, it’s been a while. Since the start of the pandemic, demand for appraisal services has gone through the roof, limiting my ability to write. Thank you if you’ve sent me work. That said, I hope to write more frequently in 2022. This is the start.
Market Analysis Ground Rules
Below are market updates for Davis, Woodland, and the Northern Yolo County small acreage residential markets. My data source is Metrolist, the MLS for my region and part of the Norcal MLS Alliance. I’m very fortunate to have such great data partners.
For suburban markets like Davis and Woodland, I limit the analysis to sales of single family residences on one lot. I exclude condominiums, townhouses, halfplexes, and small income residential properties (2-4 units) because these types of transactions in general add noise to the analysis in markets I cover. For small acreage residential properties, I include one house on a lot, two houses on a lot, manufactured homes, and modular homes outside of city limits. I usually narrow the lot size range of transactions included in the analysis. For example, the analysis below is limited to sales on lots with 1-60 acres of area.
Davis
Sales volume in Davis was significantly higher year-over-year in early 2021 because of lockdowns in 2020 but over the past six months are down year-over-year because of the surge in late 2020.
Davis 12 Month Change in Sales Volume
My favorite way to measure sale price trends in Davis is to look at monthly year-over-year metrics because of the high degree of seasonality in the Davis market. Look at the graph below. The past six months prices are up on average 20% overall in Davis. Pre-pandemic, prices were stable to declining slightly…
Davis residential real estate prices have increased rapidly over the past year
Woodland
Sales volume in Woodland has been distorted by Covid, too. Volume in early 2021 increased significantly over the prior year but were below 2020 over the summer of 2021 and are mixed most recently.
Woodland year-over-year change in monthly sales volume distorted by the pandemic
Woodland is a much less seasonal market than Davis so I use a sale price or sale price per square foot scatter graph model to show market trends. Prices have continued to rise in Woodland significantly over the past 12 months.
Woodland prices continue to increase strongly
Davis and Woodland Recent Activity
as of February 16, 2022
Prices continue to show strong appreciation. The key issue is the lack of inventory. Normally, Davis and Woodland have 50-100 single family homes listed for sale. Lack of inventory is driving competition and prices.
Another sign of lack of inventory
Competition is frantic in Davis now with the vast majority of homes receiving multiple offers. Woodland homes are receiving multiple offers at a higher than typical rate, too, but not at Davis levels. Great time to sell, terrible time to buy.
Cash Buyers in the Market
Another heat check
With most listings receiving multiple offers, I’m not surprised to see a rising percentage of all-cash buyers.
These trends are telling the same story.
Northern Yolo County Small Acreage Residential Market
As noted above, I analyzed sales of properties on 1-60 acres sold in unincorporated Yolo County. I excluded Dunnigan because it is a different market from the rest of the county with 1 acre lots next to the interstate and many manufactured homes adding noise to the analysis.
Northern Yolo County Small Acreage Residential
With so few transactions, best way to understand the market is by sales per date scatter graph. First shows all sales from the start of 2020:
Sale scatter graph showing increasing prices
Longer view:
Sale scatter graph since 1/1/10
Those familiar with this market will be able to explain the price bump in 2016 and subsequent flattening. In early 2016, Yolo County changed the code to allow for medical marijuana grows on small acreage lots. This led to a rush in outside investors competing for small acreage residential properties and rapid price increases. When Yolo County put a clamp on new permits, prices stabilized and were relatively flat heading into the pandemic. The overall lack of inventory and desire for separation from neighbors led to a return of price increases.
The Elephant in the Room
image copywrite Pixabay, free to use
The Covid pandemic surprised many of us by leading to rapid price increases driven by low inventory and historically low interest rates. Low inventory is still here but interest rates are rising rapidly:
Thanks Len.
If trends continue, at some point rising interest rates will reduce affordability enough to reduce sales activity and prices. Here’s hoping for a soft landing.
Brownie points to anyone who was not on the Yolo County Association of Realtors call last week who can tell where this is:
Small acreage residential (but not Yolo County) image copywrite Joe Lynch
I hope you’ve had your Covid-19 vaccine shots. If not and you’re in California, sign up now here.
Inventory continues to be low in the region with rising prices and competition for most properties. Sales volume is rising as shown below for Davis and Woodland:
Activity is up in Davis from the previous 12 monthsWoodland sales volume continues to increase
Inventory has risen in Davis but is still on the low side. Woodland continues to run significantly below normal.
Prices overall are increasing rapidly in Woodland and moderately in Davis. Keep in mind that specific market segments may be trending differently depending upon demand.
Includes only single family homes in Davis city limits sold through MetrolistWoodland sales reported to Metrolist in city limits of single family homes only
Multiple Offers
Everyone is talking about competing against 15 offers and prices 30% over initial list. Davis and Woodland are competitive, but not that competitive, as shown below.
Mean number of offers received trending up in Davis. Source: MetrolistWoodland showing a significant increase in offers received
Arbuckle Market Trends
Arbuckle is an unincorporated community of approximately 5,000 people located about 45 minutes northwest of Sacramento along Interstate Highway 5 in Colusa County. It features homes built in the 1940-50s plus newer subdivisions built over the past 20 years and is surrounded by farmland.
Inventory is very low, not that unusual given how small the Arbuckle market is. Sales volume in 2020 was down 10% from 2019, not unusual for the area. Prices have increased significantly over the past 12 months as shown below.
Rapid price increases in Arbuckle during the pandemic per Metrolist
A longer look shows the effect of the pandemic on pricing:
Prices were stable heading into the pandemic but increased as most markets I cover did over the past 12 monthsArbuckle, CA is surrounded by farmland and split by I-5
Of the 37 homes sold in Arbuckle since 1/1/20 in Metrolist, 17 had one offer and 20 had more than one with a peak of 17 offers for one property. Competition has picked up in Arbuckle, following trends throughout the area.
Every day I receive calls and offers from lenders, agents, and buyers hoping I can help them with a purchase appraisal. I’m very fortunate to be busy and can’t finish anything quickly now because of my workload. I strongly suggest everyone to be patient if an appraisal is part of your transaction. This graph below from Freddie Mac will help explain the situation.
Appraisal volume ties directly to interest rates. When rates fall, mortgage financing rises and drives appraisal volume up. When rates rise, appraisal volume falls. However, as shown above, the number of appraisers in the US who work with lenders has been relatively stable over the past eight years. The interest rate cycle rises and falls much more rapidly than the time it takes to develop a productive appraiser, causing appraiser shortages in times like now.
The pandemic has changed all of our lives in the past year. In local real estate, activity paused in March and April as shelter-in-place orders took effect. The Fed dropped interest rates to zero, pushing mortgage rates to historic lows. Homes became more affordable but inventory (the amount of time to sell the current number of active listings in a market) tightened because people didn’t want strangers walking through their homes during a pandemic. Low rates combined with low inventory has supercharged the local residential market.
Davis and Woodland have very few homes for sale at present with multiple offers received on most listings. The lack of inventory, very low interest rates, and lots of competition are pushing prices up as shown on the graphs below.
Davis has relatively few sales in January and March so take the 26% price increase with a grain of salt-that number is likely influenced by a change in what sold, potentially a compositional effect. I wrote about compositional effects recently.
Woodland prices have increased relatively rapidly during the pandemic on a price per square foot basis but have leveled off on a sale price basis.
Because of seasonality, I look at 12 month change in prices for Davis. Prices have increased the past 5 months compared to the previous year. Davis is a clearly appreciating market at present.
Much of my work is in unincorporated Yolo County appraising small acreage residential properties. The graph below shows a significant upward trend in these types of properties. Once again, part of the increase can be attributed to a compositional effect: the average size of homes and lots have increased, pushing up the sale price trendline somewhat. That said, prices are still increasing in this market.
Inventory was 2.5 months when I compiled this graph at the beginning of the month, shockingly low. I have not seen this market with less than 5 months of inventory in the past 10 years. Buyer preferences have shifted to having more space away from neighbors.
I enjoy many aspects of my career as a residential real estate appraiser. I’m self employed so I have no one to blame but myself; I set my own hours; I get to see a lot of places in the region; I spend much of my time trying to find meaning in data then communicating my findings; I even get to use a laser.
The best part of my job is the great animals I get to meet every day. I grew up with dogs in the house and have always gotten along with them. After college in the first year of our marriage, a friend offered us a kitten, Damien, who enriched our lives for 21 years. Thanks Dave.
Being able to read animals and owners is a key skill. I have yet to be bit after entering more than 5,000 homes over the past 18+ years which shows I’ve been successful.
(So that means I’ll get bit on my next inspection, I know how it works)
Anyway, here are pictures of some of the animals I’ve met over the past year.
I even met some goats recently.
And this is Brooke, our rescue from the pound, and Cat, who showed up on our patio.
Brooke, the walker who loves to play fetchCat. My son gave him a name but it doesn’t work for me.
What has been your experience with animals while inspecting? Any harrowing stories to share? Or have you been lucky like me and not yet bitten?
This REAA Zoom class will be on Thursday, March 18 from 6:30-8:30 PM and is approved for 2 hours of continuing education in California (only). Brian Melsheimer and I will provide a walk through of using Microsoft Excel for residential appraisal analysis. Given the limitations of our time in the class, this will be a relatively quick run through of some basic skills including creating a scatter graph, linear trendline analysis to determine time and GLA adjustments, contrasting/grouped pairs analysis, and basic Excel setup tips. We’ll also discuss online tools for appraisers.
To receive CE, you must connect to the Zoom class with video and stay in frame during the class. Also, you must have a free account on the REAA website.
Let me know if you have any questions. Hope to see you soon at the class.
The FMHPI is your friend. The index reports monthly change in house prices for national, state, and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The data series starts with January, 1975 and usually runs two to three months behind the current date. The data is available in Excel or text files with seasonal adjustments or non-seasonally adjusted.
As an appraiser, I use the FMHPI in several ways for current work:
Regional market trends. I use this data set if I want to show how house prices are trending in my home regions of Sacramento or Fairfield/Vallejo.
Market areas with little activity. I cover Stonyford, a small community on the eastern edge of the coastal mountains with very few sales. I trend surrounding MSAs to show regional activity and offer this as the best evidence available for market trends in Stonyford.
Market areas with significant non-conformity. I cover the Sacramento Delta area, a place with a mix of small towns and small acreage residential properties plus some high quality mansions. Market trends are often influenced by the mix of sales and frequently are not reliable so I use the Sacramento MSA instead.
Where the FMHPI really shines is with retrospective work. My local MLS has data going back to 1998 for my county. That’s great for the past 23 years but what if a client wants a date of value before then? In the past two years I have had requests for appraisals dated in the 1980s and early 1990s on multiple occasions. Each time I used the FMHPI to determine market trends and calculate time adjustments.
Normally I download the data into Excel and generate the chart I want, discussed below. However, you can use the pre-built chart and table tool. This is the default chart:
FMHPI default chart
You can add multiple states or MSAs for comparison by clicking the blue button:
FMHPI with Sacramento MSA
You can also adjust the time period on the chart by sliding the time frame below:
FMHPI Date Range Adjusted
Once you have the chart you want, you can print or download it as a PNG file to stick in your report or work file:
Print or download a PNG graphics file
This tool is versatile and includes a table view showing percentage change.
However, I normally download the data into my Excel work file and create my own graphs. The FMHPI MSAs Excel workbooks are two sheets with MSAs A-L on Sheet 1 and M-Z on Sheet 2. Column A is the Month with MSAs in columns in alphabetical order like this:
Month on the far left column, MSAs in alphabetical order
Here’s my simple process to deal with the way dates are formatted.
Click the link
Download the Seasonally Adjusted MSAs Index:
Click the link
Open the file and copy the Month Column into your Excel work file plus the columns of data for any MSAs you want to analyze.
Leave a column to the immediate left of the MSAs you want to work with to fill in Excel-readable dates. I usually label it “Date Sold.”
Then fill in the Date Sold column matching the dates in the FMHPI Month Column. 1975M01 is 1/1/75, 1975M02 is 2/1/75, etc. Fortunately, once you have the pattern, you can use Excel to autofill to the bottom:
Copy the columns, leaving space for Date Sold, autofill date sold
You can now use this data in Excel to make line graphs or scatter graphs. If you don’t need all 46 years of data in your chart, graph only what you need. Here’s an example of how I would prepare the Sacramento MSA data for the past two years and past 10 years plus the graphs:
Data copied from original columns for ease of creating graphs
And here are the resulting graphs:
Line Graph Example
Scatter Graph
I hope you can see the value of this data. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or are already using this data.
“You will sometimes hear statistics people talk about a ‘composition effect,’ which just means that if you are comparing a group over time, you need to beware of the possibility that the composition of the group is changing.” Why would a residential real estate appraiser care about composition effects?
Much of my time as a residential appraiser is spent determining trends in real estate markets. Every day I create charts like the one below to describe the markets in my reports.
Simple linear regression trendline showing an increasing submarket
These trendlines assume that the group of homes sold do not differ significantly over time. In most cases, this assumption is reasonable. Sometimes this assumption is false.
For example, the global pandemic has affected buyer tastes. My friend Ryan Lundquist wrote about this recently. After six months of being cooped up from the Covid-19 pandemic, buyers want a larger home. Here’s his chart showing the trends in the Sacramento region:
Change in Home Size during the Covid-19 Pandemic in the Sacramento Region from Ryan Lundquist
The average size of a home sold in the Sacramento region has increased 100 sf over the past six months. House size is the primary driver for value, so if all other factors are the same, the average price for that market will increase.
BUT IT’S AN ARTIFICIAL GAIN BECAUSE ANY GIVEN HOME OF THE SAME SIZE WOULD SELL FOR THE SAME PRICE!
Similarly, if homes decrease in size over time with no other changes, that would cause the average price to decline with no impact on individual house prices.
Here’s what I do to have a better understanding of market trends:
I trend sale price of homes sold over time,
I trend price per square foot of homes sold over time, and
I trend home gross living area over time.
Why trend price per square foot? This trick takes into account some variation in size and in conforming areas, can increase the reliability of the trend analysis. However, significant changes in size will influence the PSF trendline.
I see this frequently in Winters, California. Winters is a relatively small city of about 10,000 people located on the western edge of the Sacramento Valley not far from Davis. Below are the three graphs for Winters sales from 1/1/18 to 10/1/19 (all data from Metrolist MLS).
Sale Price trendline showing an increasing market
Prices are clearly increasing in the top graph.
PSF Trendline is stable
Prices are essentially stable when trending price per square foot for the same sales. Why?
Here’s the third chart showing size of homes over time:
GLA trended over time
The size of a home sold in Winters during this time period increased almost 1 sf per day.
Because of the math,
an increase in the average size of homes sold will push down the price per square foot trendline but will push up the sale price trendline, and
a decrease in the average size of homes sold will push up the price per square foot trendline but will push down the sale price trendline.
Here are some other examples that may cause a market to appear to change over time without a real change in market conditions:
Average lot size changes, especially for small acreage residential properties
Average age of homes changes, especially when new construction ramps up or ramps down
Better quality homes come to market
An outlier, such as a tear down or the biggest home in the county, pulls the trendline out of true
A small, heterogeneous market susceptible to change from the latest sale
A good habit is to take a look at your data. Do you see changes in your data or is it relatively similar over time?
When I do run into composition effects, such as sale price going up and price per square foot going down, I graph both together on the same graph and explain why there is a difference. I then reconcile.
“The sale price trendline is increasing while the sale price per square foot trendline is decreasing. The average size of homes have increased during this time period, skewing the sale price trendline up and the price per square foot trendline down. I conclude that this market has been relatively stable during this time.”
Hope this adds to your understanding of residential real estate markets.
