FAIRFIELD — It’s a sellers’ market in Solano County real estate, but agents are having trouble finding homes to put on the market.
Trends seem to be changing in the area once known for its abundance of empty houses as homeowners walked away or were pushed out in the foreclosure process.
For those homes that are for sale, investors and those with cash offers are squeezing many prospective buyers out of the picture. Don McDonald, managing partner with Re/Max Gold, said that last year at this time it was estimated that Fairfield had 1,800 homes that could have been put on the market, but were not. The “shadow inventory,” as it is called, is now down to about 200, he said.
McDonald said that is creating a situation where a house is receiving as many as 13 offers in two days on the market. Of those, he said, the majority are from people willing to pay cash or put as much as 20 percent down.
“We’re selling more than we are listing. Every single home is selling in a couple of days,” McDonald said. “Hopefully it will balance. Where is the inventory going to come from? We don’t have any homes to sell.”
The number of sales in Solano was down 12.2 percent from last June and down 12.9 percent from May. Solano was the only county in the nine-county Bay Area region with a drop in volume over a year ago.
One positive to come of this is home values. With so many bidders on a home, the prices are going up. According to the Bay Area Real Estate Information System, the median price in June for listings was $205,000, with the average selling price being $210,000.
With banks working harder with creative ways to keep folks in their homes, there simply aren’t the number of homes available, McDonald said.
“The banks are managing through the defaults through modifications and short sales,” he said. “By the time that home gets the first default, the bank has stepped in and took it out of default, avoiding foreclosure.”
Danny Bernardini can be reached at 427-6935 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dbernardinidr.
