New report: Affordable Sacramento area housing drops to lowest percentage in recent years
SACRAMENTO - Buying a home in today's housing market continues to prove difficult with prices out of reach for many.
In 2021, according to a recent report by Redfin, roughly 15% of homes in the Sacramento metro area were considered affordable. In 2022, only 4.4% were affordable.
And now new numbers show that in 2023 less than 3% of homes in the Sacramento area are affordable.
"It's not cheap to live in this area anymore," Natomas homeowner Chris Lombardi homeowner said.
A home is considered affordable if the monthly mortgage payment is no more than 30% of the local county's median household income.
Stockton's numbers for affordable homes aren't much better. In 2021, 17.4% of homes in the Stockton area were affordable. Last year that dropped to about 7%.
Now, Redfin says only about 5% of homes in Stockton are affordable.
Lombardi said a dream neighborhood just isn't the case for buyers anymore.
"If you want a house in a certain area you gotta trim the fat elsewhere. Maybe you don't buy the vehicle you want or do the vacation you normally would," he said.
"Here in California and Sacramento especially," said CEO of Big Block Realty North, Suneet Agarwal, "they're trying to pass a lot of new incentives for building and permitting. This should start alleviating some of this."
Agarwal said the number one factor in declining affordable homes is interest rates.
"It kept many home sellers from putting their home on the market they didn't want to give up their low rate in the twos and threes," he continues, "add that to the influx of people moving here from the Bay Area and other places."
"A lot of our neighbors came from the Bay Area so maybe they made their money stretch a bit further up here," Lombardi said.
First-time home buyers are facing bidding wars due to low inventory. But Agarwal said it's possible things may lighten in California due to next year being a presidential election year.
