A buyer we are working with in Carmichael sent us a listing last week with a note: "Comps say $460K, they're asking $475K, it's been sitting 50 days, what gives?" The answer is that her comps were wrong. Not wrong on the arithmetic. Wrong on the calendar. The three sales she pulled closed in August, which means they went into contract in June and July, when the 30-year fixed was in the mid-6s and a lot more people were shopping. The house was not overpriced against June. It was overpriced against November.
That gap is the subject of Ryan Lundquist's latest piece on the Sacramento Appraisal Blog, "Buyers hitting the pause button & pulling comps." He writes for appraisers, and the post is mostly about how an appraiser should build a value when the buyers who set the last comps have left the room. We want to translate it for the people who actually have to sign something.
What Changed Since Summer
Lundquist's estimate is that buyer demand in the Sacramento region has dropped somewhere around 15–20% in recent months. That lines up with about 40% of October's pendings cut price first and with an average of roughly 47 days to get into contract. Rates are the main reason. The 30-year fixed hit 7.40% in mid-October in Freddie Mac's weekly survey and had eased to 7.24% by October 29, still more than a point above the 6.17% of a year earlier. Gas, groceries, insurance, and plain uncertainty are doing the rest.
Here is the line we want every client to remember. Lundquist calls closed prices "the caboose in the train of real estate data." A sale that closed last week was negotiated six weeks ago off comps from the summer. By the time it shows up in a sold search, it is describing a market that is already gone. The engine of the train is what is going pending right now. If you only look at the caboose, you will price like it is still July.
How We Build Comps in a Market Like This
Nothing about the method changed. What changed is which numbers deserve weight. Our grid has three columns now, and we pull them in this order.
Pendings first. Similar homes that went into contract in the last 30 to 45 days are the only comps that reflect buyers who exist today. We do not always know the contract price before closing, but a pending's list price and its days on market tell you a lot. If three similar homes went pending at $425,000 after sitting three weeks, that is your market, whatever the August closings say.
Closed sales second, and adjusted. His worked example is the one to internalize: a neighborhood where the top summer sales hit $440,000 and the current pendings are running $420,000 to $430,000. The honest move is to take $10,000 to $20,000 off those older sales before using them, and he is careful to say there is no fixed rule for the size of that adjustment. The point is the direction. A summer comp is a ceiling, not a target.
Active listings third, as a sanity check. What is sitting unsold at $470,000 tells you where the market is not. Lundquist's practical tip is to run the MLS map search with solds, pendings, and actives all turned on at once, instead of a sold-only list. We have been doing this for years and it is the fastest way to see a street's story in one screen.
Two more habits matter more than usual. Reach back further than 90 days if you need to, because a thin fall market may not give you three good recent sales, and a six-month-old comp with a candid adjustment beats a bad recent one. And when a subdivision has no pendings, look at the adjacent subdivision rather than reaching back to spring. We see this constantly in Fair Oaks and Carmichael, where older housing stock varies so much lot to lot that the nearest true comp is sometimes a mile away. Tract neighborhoods in Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove are easier, because the same floor plan sells every few weeks.
For Buyers: Reading a Listing That Has Been Sitting
A 50-day listing in this market is not a mystery. It is a seller who priced to the caboose. Here is how we read it.
Pull the pendings before you decide it is overpriced. Sometimes the sitting listing is right and the neighborhood just has thin traffic. More often, the pendings tell you where the real number is, and the difference between asking and that number is your opening.
One cut after 45 days usually means the seller has caught up to reality, not that they are desperate. Treat the reduced price as the true ask. Negotiate from there with a comp sheet, not with a lowball. Sellers in this market respond to evidence, and a clean pending-comps grid is far more persuasive than a round number.
The lender's appraiser will make the same adjustment you did. If you offer $460,000 on the Carmichael house and the pendings say $440,000, the appraisal is likely to come in near the pendings, because the appraiser is reading the same post you are. Offer to the pendings and you avoid the appraisal-gap conversation entirely.
Know your payment before your comps. The buyer pool shrank because the monthly number got heavy, not because people stopped wanting houses. Work out what you can actually afford at today's rate, then shop a tier below it so a credit toward a buydown has room to work. We explained the buydown math when rates first crossed 7%.
For Sellers: Pre-Appraise Your Own House
The most expensive mistake a seller can make this fall is to price off the neighbor's July closing and find out at the appraisal, six weeks into escrow, that the buyer's lender disagrees.
So do the appraisal first. Before we set a list price, we build the same three-column grid an appraiser would, apply the same downward adjustment to the summer sales, and set the number slightly under the most recent pendings. Lundquist's advice this month is that the days of "testing the market at a higher level" are over, and we agree. Testing costs you the first two weekends, which are the only weekends that matter.
Then make sure the house earns the number. The condition gap we wrote about in June is wider at 7.24% than it was at 6.5%, because the buyers who are left are choosy. Our seller guide covers what to fix. If the house is right and the price is built on pendings, you are in the 60% that goes into contract without a cut.
The New Comp Nobody Pulls: Insurance
Lundquist adds insurance to the list of demand factors this month, and we think it deserves its own section. Statewide, the California FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort, grew its policy count 8.4% this year, slower than before, but the average policy cost rose about 30%. Most local counties have plateaued on policy counts. Those are statewide figures, not Sacramento ones, and the local picture varies by elevation.
In the foothills, that means fire. A buyer in El Dorado Hills who falls in love with a ridge lot needs a bindable fire quote on the specific address before the contingency period runs out, because a FAIR Plan policy plus a wrap-around can add hundreds a month to a payment that was already tight. In the basin, it means flood. A buyer in Natomas or the river neighborhoods should get a flood quote and confirm what the lender will require. One reader of the appraisal blog reported a $3,800-a-year flood quote for $250,000 of coverage in a Zone X area; that is an anecdote, not a statistic, but the order of magnitude is the point.
Our rule now: the insurance quote goes in the first three days of the inspection contingency, before the inspection itself. It is the cheapest thing to check and the most expensive thing to discover late. Sellers, the flip side is a selling point. If you carry a current, affordable policy with a standard carrier, say so in the listing and have the declarations page ready.
The Bottom Line
The buyers who set the summer comps are mostly gone, and the ones still shopping are paying 7.24% and reading pending prices. The slow recovery we described in August stalled when rates moved; the market did not fall apart, it just started reading from a different page. Lundquist's post tells appraisers to weight what is going into contract and adjust what already closed. That is the right instruction for buyers and sellers too. Price to the engine, not the caboose.
Want a number built on this month's pendings, not a spring closing? Get a valuation built on this month's pendings. Buyers, search Sacramento homes for sale and sort by days on market to find the listings that have not caught up yet. Or contact us and we will pull the three-column grid for any address you are considering.
Or call us directly: (916) 739-2424
The Peter Parker Team | DRE# 01257844 | eXp Realty DRE# 01878277
Market data is approximate as of early November 2026 and drawn from the Sacramento Appraisal Blog and Freddie Mac. Conditions and rates change weekly; verify current figures before making a decision. This is general information, not financial, insurance, or legal advice.