A Tsunami is Coming!

A Tsunami is Coming!

There’s a tidal wave of epic proportions of home buyers that is coming – directly from the southwest of us.  Real estate analysts predict that one third of the home buyers currently planning to buy real estate in the greater Sacramento, El Dorado, and Placer Counties areas are from the Bay Area.  North State Building Industry Association reports that they’ve checked with builders and guesses the one-third figure may be conservative at some new subdivisions.

Bay Area residents are blowing up Sacramento home developer websites, clicking through floor plans, watching promotional videos and signing up for email blasts, according to the New Home Company – a firm that is building in El Dorado Hills, downtown Sacramento and Davis.

The reasons are obvious: The median price of a Bay Area home hit $850,000 in April, according to CoreLogic, a real estate data company. That's a $100,000 increase in one year. In San Francisco, the median price hit $1.3 million. That often buys no more than a 1,600-square-foot house!  In contrast, the April median sales price for a resale home in Sacramento County was $357,000. And the median for a new home was $433,000.

As we reported in the Easterbrook Team newsletter last week, a recent survey reported that 46% of the Bay Area residents say they want to move out of the region within the next few years. They cite the high cost of living, high housing costs, traffic congestion and homelessness.
By contrast, Sacramento, El Dorado, and Placer Counties offer relative affordable housing, excellent employment opportunities, recreation, and a great central hub with an easy commute to the wineries in the foothills, Lake Tahoe and Donner Lake, and an easy drive back down to the Bay (if the former residents feel homesick).  
What can you do to ride this wave? 

·         Gear up!  If you don’t have a web presence, now would be the time to jump in.  No website?  Call us, we have recently helped several agents and even helped build one Realtor’s site from scratch for him. 

·         You can also build your online presence by affiliating with activity magnets such as Zillow, Realtor.com.

·         Facebook is still a powerhouse!  You can directly advertise homes and real estate services to Bay Area residents.

·         Open Houses – what better way to present yourself as the Sacramento Ambassador than to connect face to face with folks up from the Bay? 

Do you have any ideas to capture the wave of buyers coming soon?  Let us know.  Also, let us know how the Easterbrook Team can help you with your business.  We’d love to partner with you and help your real estate business grow!

The Easterbrook Team 916.850.6050 EasterbrookTeam@spmc.com