Stockton and Sacramento Trip Report

Today is a sunny, beautiful day. It took me about 1 hour and 20 minutes to commute from peninsula to Stockton in weekend no-traffic. It was certainly an enjoyable drive – 11 miles long San Mateo Bridge across the bay, sexy small mountains along freeway 580 and great countryside scene from Tracy to Stockton. I visited a big new development called “Marado” in Stockton. There are about 1600 new single family houses developed in the area and the project is almost over. There are only a few unfilled lots and the builder is selling model homes at 6% discount today. The builder had good timing and certainly made tons of money. Unfortunately, for the late new home buyers, they are much less lucky. Cruising around this new community, I saw a lot of “for sale” signs on every street. On top of my head, almost 1 of every 8 houses seems on the market. It is not unusual that 3-4 consecutive houses are for sale. Signs such as “Make Offer”, “Just re-reduced”, “Lender Foreclosure”, “Home Auction” are everywhere in this 1600 houses community. The situation is indeed really bad there and someone give Stockton the honor of “the capital of foreclosure”. The quality of houses is really good – all modern design, high ceiling, nice yard, 3-4 bedrooms. It might be a long journey for these houses on the market to get cleared.

After having some McDonald, I continued to drive north to the capital of California – Sacramento. It took me another 50 minutes. I visited so-called “Deal of Century” from home builder of Hovanian. Surprisingly, the so-called “Deal of Century” is nothing more than 15k discount. Hovanian has huge development in Suburban of Sacramento. I saw a few other builders are developing there too including BZH. After chatting with the saleslady for about 10 minutes, I learned that the major employers in that area are downtown sac where the government jobs are, HP, INTEL, KAISER (and a couple of other hospitals), UC DAVIS medical center, Sacramento international airport. All are within 20 minutes commute. Price ranges from 360k-470k (1500-2100 square footage homes). Actually, I like Sacramento quite bit. If someone happens to work there, it is a nice place to live and raise kids. There is downtown sac and beautiful countrywide joy as well. However, as a potential investment, it is hard to say since there seems endless land supply and builders are ready to build as much as needed. Buying a short-sale in south san Francisco near BART might be a better investment than buying a house in Sacramento from the point view of money game.