Are we back to a normal market? Are we going to start appreciating again? Are the foreclosures and short sales over with? Well, not necessarily. But the positive news is this. We have more buyers than homes for sale. Rates are below 5.5% and this is the 4th month in a row that the average sales price in Sacramento County has gone up. Here is a great article from the Sacramento Business Journal:

U.S. new-home sales eked out a modest 0.7 percent gain last month, missing expectations on Wall Street and the latest evidence that the hard-hit housing market continues to struggle. New-home sales increased to a seasonally adjusted 429,000 in August, compared to 426,000 in July, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

It was the fifth-consecutive month of increased sales, but the figure was 3.4 percent lower than August 2008, and greatly missed the 440,000 sales predicted by Thomson Reuters. But the West region, which includes California, enjoyed a 12.1 percent increase in new-home sales last month compared to July — and a 30.4 percent gain from August 2008. The West was the only region to report an increase nationwide