Andrew Dowling

My last post got me thinking… I mentioned that not as many high priced homes here in Davis are selling lately.  Is this, in fact, accurate and… are the ones that are selling being sold at a discount (a significantly lower price per square foot)?

Well… to partially answer this, I looked at 4th quarter sales of homes within Davis with at least 2200 square feet.  19 of these homes sold in the last three months of 2009… compared to 23 the year before, and 17 in 2007.  Not too different… pretty typical in fact.  The average price per square foot for these 2009 home sales was $251.0 which is 7.5% lower than the average price per square foot of all homes sold in the 4th quarter of 2009.  If you look at 2008 4th quarter sales, the larger homes (over 2200 square feet) sold for $270.69 which was only 5.2% lower than the average price per square foot that all homes sold at in that same time period.

Here are the closings for the month of December 2009 (as well as the properties within Davis currently pending sale)… dec-09-closings.pdf

It is very interesting to look at these numbers as the properties pending sale are pending at a price of approximately $300 per square foot (slightly below when you factor in the “pending bring backup” properties).  The average sales price per square foot for these properties will likely be in the low $290’s which is higher than both last December/January and last month (Nov ‘09).

On the other hand, most of these properties are lower priced homes.  Not may high end homes are selling as evidenced by the lower median price in Davis…  Which will very likely be under $400,000 in January (unless several higher priced homes sell this week with very short escrow periods).