Meet Robert Kleinhenz

I attended the Sacramento Association of Realtors monthly main meeting this morning. The speaker was the California Association of Realtors Deputy Chief Economist, Robert Kleinhenz. Interesting insights. I wish I could have taped his presentation because he cited so many statistics and graphs. Couple interesting things... The Sacramento market specifically, has one of the highest affordability rates in the entire state - at about 53% (CA rate is 33%, and US rate is 65%). He makes the claim that the majority of the problem our market is suffering from the tightening of lending standards, which limits buyers' ability to purchase, especially for higher priced homes (jumbo lending over $417k). Basically his prediction is that the peak of the foreclosures will occur through the end of this year, and then start to decrease...once the REO inventory starts declining, the market in general will start to get back to a place where there is buyer / seller equilibrium.