Woodland has experienced a fairly stable year in terms of sales, listings and homes under contract. There are significantly fewer homes for sale in October 2011 than there were in October 2008. In October 2008 there were 236 homes for sale with 53 closed sales. This means the number of homes for sale 3 years ago was about 46% higher than now. Both numbers include distressed properties like short sales and bank owned foreclosed homes.

The months of available inventory (meaning if no new homes were to come onto the market) went from 4.9 months in October 2010 to 2.4 months October 2011. Typically when that number gets to be around 4 months an area is considered to have a housing shortage. While there are significantly fewer homes for sale this has not translated to an increase in price. The average sold price in October 2010 was $216,000 and the average sold price in October 2011 was $191,000. While this number isn’t always a straight line indicator of home prices, it still points to a downward trend in home prices.

Woodland still has a significant number of distressed properties on the market. This next chart shows only non distressed sales.

So while there were 40 closed sales in October 2011 only 10 of those sales were not either a short sale or a bank owned property. Non distressed properties did sell on average for more money with an average sold price of $238,000 vs $177,000 for bank owned properties (18 sales) and $173,000 for closed short sales (12 sales). This does not mean however that a “normal” sale should always get more money – the distressed property sales prices are sometimes lower because they are in worse condition so that needs to be taken into account. Also if a non-distressed homeowner who has plenty of equity in the property has a strong desire to sell they may price the home to compete with the lower priced short sales and bank owned properties. Each home that comes onto the market needs to be analyzed how it competes with other homes currently for sale and each buyer needs to analyze which homes really might be a bargain.

Visit Woodland Homes for Sale to see all properties currently for sale in Woodland today. You can modify the search a number of ways including short sale and bank owned status or just look at the latest listings by checking new in the past 7 days.