Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

 Hello again Paradise CA real estate market watchers and welcome back to your weekly stats. There is really not anything of note in this weeks’s report. With the deadline to qualify for any type of homebuyer tax credit fast approaching, I would expect to seeing some upward movements in the stats over the next 4-6 weeks.

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Here are the numbers for last week’s Lake Oroville real estate market. This is the third week in a row that the number of Oroville home sales has been in single digits, and the 7th week out of the past 8 for this. With inventories still low, and a lot of that inventory in disrepair it is becoming more and more difficult to find properties for Oroville area buyers.  All of my team members have pools of buyers that they simply cannot find decent properties to show them.

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 Now, before you get too excited about the change in sales for the Paradise real estate market compared to last week, you need to know that I have made a change in the areas that I am tracking for you.  Due to popular demand I have now added the Magalia area to my Paradise CA weekly reporting.  Reporting on a larger geographical area will smooth our the wild swings in the numbers that sometime occur with smaller samples of numbers. Stay tuned for future reports.

 Another ho-hum week for Lake Oroville real estate market as sales activity continues to under perform. But once again we find that the inventory of Oroville homes for sale has dropped to another low. 

If the current activity in the office of our Oroville market is any indication we may soon be seeing a change in these sales numbers. Our Oroville agents have been very busy this week showing property and writing offers. It is good to see that maybe the spring-like weather is bringing buyers out.

If you are thinking of selling, now might be the time to get your home on the market.

Over the past eighteen months or so I am sure you have seen many an article written by various real estate professionals encouraging buyers to “get off the fence” to take advantage of the low prices and low interest rates currently available.  As a regular reader of this Lake Oroville and Paradise, CA real estate blog you have also seen my views of market conditions over the past year. Many buyers have taken the advice and made some magnificent deals on their purchase of homes in the Oroville and Paradise, Ca real estate markets.

The advice has been taken so seriously in fact that a new dilemma is now facing potential Oroville and Paradise buyers: A lack of adequate inventory!

Suffering from significant loses in the value of their homes, many Oroville and Paradise potential home sellers have decided to wait for the market to get “better” before putting their homes on the market. What the definition of “better” is remains to be seen, but a look at the trend in the Oroville inventory numbers (see chart) points to a need for some sellers to get off the fence themselves and take advantage of the lower interest rates, and the increase in buyer inquiries we are beginning to experience.

Granted, home prices are not what they were in 2006, but if you are waiting for a return to those prices, you are in for a very long wait. Those prices were a result of very loose and irresponsible lending standards. They were not driven by free market demand.

So what is a seller to do? Well, that depends on your circumstances. If you do not need to sell, then DON’T. If you are considering a sell but are thinking about waiting for a year or so for the market to improve, you may be outsmarting yourself. While it is possible (isn’t anything possible) that prices may move up in the next year, it is not very probable. I continue to think that we are at the bottom of this market but that we will be bouncing along the bottom for quite some time. Maybe two to three years before we see any consistent price appreciation trends in our local markets.

Historically low interest rates, and lower prices have significantly increased the home affordability for Californians. An increase in either of these factors will exclude potential buyers from the market further delaying any meaningful recovery.

Another thing to consider when contemplating a sale is how many other homes are on the market that compete for the attention of potential buyers. With inventories at an 8 month low, now would be the best time for your home to be seen by the most buyers.

I know that many of you are upside down with your mortgages at the present time and NEED to wait for a significant turn in home values. But for those of you who owe less than the value of your home or own your homes outright, this may be a good time to think about getting off the fence.

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A not so funny thing happened to the Paradise, CA real estate market last week. Only two sales to report from Paradise this week.

The one encouraging thing to take from the week’s meager numbers is the fact that the average Paradise home sale was over $250,000 and the average time that each of these two homes were on the market was only 24 days. From the seller’s side of the equation it is good to see higher prices homes selling quickly.  Hopefully we will have more substantial numbers to discuss next week.

Hello again, Paradise, Ca real estate fans. Looks like we just did a little clearing out of inventory that has been on the market for a while. Average days on the market for the week, as well as the average sold price indicate that. Inventory numbers are holding steady, but again with only three week’s of data, any type of trend is impossible to develop. We will have a much better idea of market activity for the Paradise, Ca homes market in the next three weeks or so.

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 Sales for the Lake Oroville real estate market took a turn for the better this past week. The average sold price was the highest it has been in a very long time thanks to the sale of a couple homes that had been on the market for quite some time. The sale of these two particular homes was also the reason for the nearly doubling of the “days on the market” time. One of the homes had been on the market 928 days and the other had been for sale for 897 days.

Once again, though, the number of the week to lookout for is the number of Oroville homes currently on the market. This number has hit another new low for this blog site and is threatening to go under 300 for the first time in probably two years.

Welcome back, once again, to your weekly sales update for the Paradise, California  real estate market. Market activity remains stable this week when compared to last week. The astute observer that you are probably noticed a revision in the housing numbers that I reported last week.  The revision was made because my intent is to report home sales activity for the town of Paradise. Last week’s report also included the Magalia area.

Which brings me to the question of what you want to see in these Paradise numbers. Do you want to see  just Paradise stats or would you like to me to include numbers for the Magalia area too?

Paradise, listings, homes for sale, properties, Lake Oroville, Oroville, Creal estateA Butte county

 It seems that this week’s Lake Oroville real estate market report reflects some ongoing reporting issues the local REALTORS are having with our new multiple listing service system.

It looks as though that the inventory of unsold homes is beginning to increase slightly. This may be an effect of some sellers trying to get a head start on what most people think is the peak selling season of Spring. Hopefully we can get the bugs worked out of our new MLS system soon. Watch for the weekly sales numbers for the Paradise real estate market later this week.