The typical home in Citrus Heights spent 20 days on the market in the three months ending May, up from 13 days during the same stretch last year — a roughly 54% increase that points to a market where buyers are taking more time to commit. According to newly released Redfin data, that slower pace stands out in a spring market that otherwise looks healthy: sales volume rose, prices firmed up from earlier in the year, and inventory held essentially flat.
Buyers have more breathing room
A year ago, the median home in this Sacramento-area city of roughly 86,500 residents was finding a buyer in under two weeks. This spring, it’s taking closer to three. The change is even more striking compared with two years ago, when homes were going under contract in just nine days, and with five years ago — at the height of pandemic-era demand — when the median was six days.
Recent momentum has improved, however. Days on market fell 20% from the three months ending in April, when the median sat at 25 days. That kind of pickup is typical as the spring buying season ramps up, but the year-over-year gap suggests a market that has genuinely cooled from the frenetic pace of recent years, even if it remains tilted toward sellers. With 1.8 months of supply — calculated from 386 active listings against 209 homes sold — Citrus Heights still meets the traditional definition of a sellers’ market, where buyers face limited choice.
Prices ease, but per-square-foot holds firm
The median sale price came in at $479,463, down 3.9% from $499,000 a year earlier. That works out to roughly a $20,000 drop in the headline price. But the median price per square foot was $324, essentially unchanged from $323 last spring, suggesting that the dip in the headline figure reflects buyers gravitating toward smaller homes rather than a broad decline in property values.
Compared with the three months ending in April, the median sale price actually rose 4.2%, from $460,000 — consistent with the seasonal lift that typically arrives in late spring. Looking back further, prices remain modestly below the $486,000 median seen in the same period of 2024, and they sit about 9.8% above the $436,500 median from five years ago.
Sellers continue to fare well on price relative to their asking figures. The sale-to-list ratio was 100.3%, meaning the typical home sold slightly above its asking price, and 41.2% of homes sold for more than list — nearly identical to the 41.3% share a year ago.
Sales activity and the rate backdrop
Sales volume rose 10.6% year-over-year, with 209 homes changing hands compared with 189 in the same period last year. New listings, at 266, came in below last spring’s 291, while active inventory of 386 was essentially flat with the 385 figure from a year earlier.
The mortgage rate environment has eased some of the affordability pressure. The 30-year fixed averaged 6.44% in May, down from 6.82% a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac data published by the Federal Reserve. Combined with the lower median price, the monthly principal-and-interest payment on a median-priced home with 20% down works out to about $2,409 — roughly $199 less per month than a year ago. Even so, that payment consumes about 35% of the median household’s monthly income. Citrus Heights’ median household income is $82,314, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which puts the city’s price-to-income ratio at 5.8 — above the 5x threshold generally considered stretched.
Nationally, home prices were down slightly year-over-year in March, based on the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, mirroring the modest price softening seen locally.
The bottom line
The clearest story in Citrus Heights this spring is one of timing rather than pricing. Homes are still selling close to ask, sellers are still getting offers above list more than 40% of the time, and inventory hasn’t piled up. But the days-on-market figure — up from 13 to 20 — signals that buyers, helped by softer prices and lower rates than a year ago, are no longer under the same pressure to move quickly.