Every agent in this region gets asked the same question at every barbecue, every open house, every listing appointment. How’s the market?

For years the honest answer has been “it depends on what you’re looking at.” So we brought in someone who spends his days looking at all of it.

Ryan Lundquist is a certified residential appraiser and housing analyst who has been appraising full time since 2003. His Sacramento Appraisal Blog just turned 17 years old, and he tracks data across 12 counties. He spoke 58 times last year, which he admits was too many. If you’re an agent or broker in this region, you’ve probably read his graphs whether you realized it or not.

Here’s what he told us about where the market actually stands.

All ships rise and fall with the tide

That’s one of Ryan’s favorite phrases, and it’s how he frames the region. Sacramento, Placer, Yolo, and El Dorado counties tend to trend together. But within that tide, the temperature is not the same everywhere.

His read at the time we recorded: prices had hit an inflection point and softened, down a couple percent from a year prior. Condos are colder than detached homes. Luxury has had robust volume. The under-$500,000 first-time buyer segment, priced right and checking the boxes, is the hottest part of the market.

The bigger story is what he calls a volume recession, running close to four years now. Historically low sales, but also a historically low number of listings. Low supply and low demand met in the middle. Supply started to grow last year, then began shrinking again.

The top of the market has a pricing problem

Nobody in the region beats El Dorado Hills for sales above $2 million. There are also only so many $2 million buyers, and that’s the tension.

Above a million, Ryan pegged supply at roughly 10 months. That’s not wildly out of line historically, but it’s a different world than the contracted supply of a few years ago, and it lands in the segment most prone to what he called obscene overpricing.

The number that should stop any listing agent: in February, about 90% of properties above $1.5 million sold below their original list price. He recalled exactly one that went over, and it went over by $5,000.

Cancellations skew heavily toward the top too. Some of that is sellers picking a unicorn number and waiting for someone to validate it.

Buyers at that level aren’t desperate. They’re discerning. They’ll wait for the right opportunity, and they are not going to close a $2 million gap for you.

We ran the same exercise locally. In Auburn in January 2026, 18 homes sold, with average days on market around 109. Almost all of them closed below list. One went on at $1.15 million, took multiple reductions, and eventually sold for $800,000. That’s $350,000 that either evaporated or was never there in the first place.

The conversation you have to be willing to have

So what do you say when a seller’s number and the market’s number don’t match?

Ryan starts with a question rather than a rebuttal. What is your perception of value based on? Sometimes the honest answer surfaces fast. I need to pay off this debt. I need this much to buy the next house. The market doesn’t care about either of those.

From there, pressure-test the comps. Two sales across the street are sales, not necessarily comparables.

The harder part of his advice is aimed at agents. This market requires drawing boundaries, and sometimes the right answer is no. If a seller won’t listen to a reasonable list price from the start, or won’t concede that a reduction or a repair credit might be coming, that’s a red flag, not a negotiation opening. Let it become someone else’s problem unless the sign in the yard is genuinely worth it.

He also made a pointed observation. Agents spend a lot of time on social media describing themselves as negotiators. This is the market that actually tests that, and it starts with the seller, not the buyer.

Are builders overbuilding here?

Short answer: no, not the way Austin or parts of Florida did.

Some builders are carrying standing inventory, but they’re moving it with large concessions and, in some cases, price reductions. The ones holding the line on price and refusing to concede anything are the ones sitting.

What Ryan found notable is that builders have started working much harder with the agent community. One hired him to deliver a market update, something he says has happened exactly once before in his career. Builder volume in January and February was running slightly ahead of last year while resale volume was slightly behind.

Buyers are showing up with bigger expectations, and builders appear to have cracked at least part of that code.

Affordability, and why nobody in office is fixing it

Ryan was blunt here, and critical of both parties.

The main legislative push has been a bill targeting institutional investors. He views most of it as political posturing that looks like action on affordability while doing very little. Institutional buyers are largely dormant in California anyway, and as written, the bill also captures build-to-rent operators, who would have to sell off properties within seven years. Roughly 50,000 build-to-rent units went up nationally last year, including locally in Lincoln, Rancho Cordova, and Folsom. That’s product this market needs.

His view is that the most useful thing government can do is let supply get built, rather than juicing demand by pushing rates down and adding more buyers to a market that’s already short on inventory.

Then he offered the number that reframes everything. At this point in 2008, the Sacramento region had about 12,000 more active listings than it does today. Imagine logging into MLS and seeing that. We currently have fewer active listings than we did a year ago.

That, more than anything, is why the market feels stuck.

“But I don’t want my home value to drop”

It’s the obvious objection to any argument for more supply, so we put it to him directly.

His answer: somebody gets hurt either way. If prices fall, some sellers get hurt. Right now, buyers are the ones getting hurt. The question is whose pain matters more, and the default position of both the real estate industry and Washington has been to keep prices high.

He also pushed back on the idea that housing only goes up. Markets move in both directions, and where you win in real estate is by holding long term. The average year might be up 4% to 6%, but we haven’t had average years lately. Someone who bought four or five years ago may be sitting at roughly the same value today.

He’s not shy about what caused it, either. He wrote a post in the summer of 2021 titled “Mortgage rates are too low,” and got unsubscribed by an angry loan officer over it. His position hasn’t changed. Rates that low injected explosive, uncharacteristic growth in a very short window. It felt great. It wasn’t healthy.

For context, the region is still up about 30% from March 2020, and down roughly 7% from the May 2022 peak.

Zillow, AI, and why comps still win

He does look at the online estimates, and he named three worth checking: Zillow, Redfin, and Homes.com. Not for data, but because his client is probably looking at them, and if his number differs he wants to explain why.

Sometimes they’re spot on. Sometimes they’re far off. The newer wrinkle is people quoting ChatGPT at him about what an ADU is worth or what the market is doing.

His caution applies to every one of them, including the regional stats he himself publishes. A median down 7% or 8% from mid-2022 does not rigidly apply to a multi-million dollar property or to a condo. Those are excellent ways to describe the market as a whole and poor ways to price a specific house. You still have to go to neighborhood comps.

He also had some advice for anyone refreshing their Zillow estimate daily: don’t. It’s a manic way to live.

Pricing and timing right now

Traditional spring peak competition lands between March and April, with the market historically softening around May. The last couple of years it actually peaked in April.

But his real point was that timing matters far less than pricing. List whenever, just don’t do it on Thanksgiving, and be priced right.

On whether sellers should order a pre-listing appraisal, he was refreshingly uninterested in selling his own service. If the agent and seller are aligned and confident, he doesn’t think it’s necessary. It makes more sense when there’s a reason for it anyway, like an inherited property that needs a date-of-death valuation.

His pricing philosophy for this market is simple. Buyers are extremely sensitive to price, and even a little bit over gets punished. He’d rather price slightly low to whet the appetite than reach 5% high. As he put it, buyers don’t care about funding your Hawaii vacation.

What about rates?

Everyone wants a magic number. Ryan doesn’t think 5.5% is it.

Run the payment difference between 6.4% and 5.5% and it isn’t dramatic. If a buyer is $1,000 a month away from affording a home, a $200 swing doesn’t close that.

His proof is the builders. They’ve been buying rates down substantially and still have to stack concessions on top to move product. That tells you a low rate alone doesn’t unlock this market.

Would 5% make a real difference? Yes, he says, demand would jump. But it wouldn’t be 2021 demand, and he thinks it would be one of the worst things that could happen to the market’s health. What we need is more supply and softer prices.

The outlook

Stuck. That’s his word for 2026.

There’s no mechanism for the market to get unstuck quickly, and no mechanism for prices to fall quickly either. Sellers have been re-engaging over the past several months, which is good, but if they pull back the whole thing seizes up again.

He expects the volume recession to continue, condos to stay softer than detached, and a modest uptick in short sales as some owners discover they don’t have much equity. He thinks NAR’s projection of 14% more national volume is far too optimistic. A few percent would be a win.

The buyers and sellers who do move will be lifestyle-driven. Moving to Tennessee. Having a baby. Outgrowing the house. The math is hard, but life doesn’t wait for the math.

Which brings us to the best line of the conversation. It’s been a volume recession for four years, and that will probably continue. But a volume recession doesn’t have to be a life recession. If you’re waiting for the market to rescue you, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Find Ryan

Ryan writes weekly at SacramentoAppraisalBlog.com and posts market graphs almost daily. He’s @SacAppraiser on Instagram and X. Not on TikTok, and he seemed at peace with that.

Watch the full conversation here: Ryan Lundquist on Eastok Realty’s Podcast