Carson Valley housing market red hot

With only 49 available homes in East Fork Township’s inventory on Tuesday, home prices aren’t likely to go anywhere but up for the foreseeable future.

With weather cooperating, January saw 14 single family building permits, which is comparable to January 2021’s 15.

While prices continue to set records, demand remains high for homes in Douglas County.
Re/Max Realty Broker Owner John Fisher said he’s never seen anything like the current market.

“There’s no available inventory,” he said. “A property jumps off the shelf as soon as it gets listed.”

Fisher said that in 2019, there were 29 sales of homes above $1 million, in 2020, that number more than doubled to 63. In 2021, it was up to 113.

“That number blows me away,” he said. “Some of that’s Clear Creek, but it’s across the board. It used to be a buyer would say ‘I don’t want to spend $500,000,’ and now it’s, ‘well see if you can find me something under $1 million.’ It’s crazy.”

He said the median price for a home in January was up 25.9 percent to $648,560 with the square foot price of $341 up 18.8 percent compared to the same month in 2021.

“Every month, I think maybe it’s starting to level off, but this winter the market is just constricted.”

While an increase in interest rates may slow down markets in California, but a lot of the home buyers in Douglas County aren’t getting large loans.

“They’re coming with cash,” he said. “If the rate got up to 5-6 percent we might see a change, but a 1 percent increase is not that significant.”

Fisher said he doesn’t think the market will change soon.

“I don’t think it’s going to change this year while demand exceeds supply,” he said. “This is a great place to live when you add it all together, especially when compared to the places people are coming from.”

A review on the county website of building permits issued during 2021 revealed 294. That’s the largest single amount since 2006, the year before the arrival of the Great Recession.

Demand has prompted builders to tackle projects that might not have penciled out in earlier years.

Construction of a half-dozen homes on the west side of East Valley Road has contractors digging up the road to connect to sewer and water on six one-acre parcels near the intersection with Chowbuck.

Last year set a record for median and average home prices as demand for homes drives up prices.

The median sales price hit $539,000 during 2021 in the East Fork Township, according to the Douglas County Assessor’s Office, with the average sales price hitting $666,941.

Those prices did nothing to deter sales, with 962 homes changing hands during the year, a number not seen since 2005 when 1,153 homes sold at an average sales price of $430,585.