Council OKs revised Housing Element

Document is just the beginning

By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer

The Davis City Council on Tuesday adopted version 2.0 of the Housing Element, a plan that outlines for the state how the city will meet its housing needs through 2029.

It was the second goround for the council, which approved an initial version in August 2021 that was rejected by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

Home market emerges from topsy-turvy 2022

By Jeff Hudson Enterprise correspondent

Steadily rising mortgage interest rates and chronically low number of existing homes for sale in Davis at any given time during recent years combined to push local home prices higher during the first half of 2022. And then prices came down a bit during the final months of the year. When the Federal

Reserve Bank — seeking to cool rising inflation — started raising interest rates in March, some prospective buyers decided to try and buy a house (and lock down a comparatively low mortgage interest rate), before the Fed acted to raise interest rates again.

Economists say that when market demand exceeds available supply, prices start to rise. And that's what happened during the first half of 2022 with Davis home prices. During the first half of 2022, as prospective buyers looked at the limited supply of homes for sale, quite a few prospective sellers received multiple offers on their property, sometimes leading to bidding wars between prospective buyers.

The final sales price often ran higher than the seller's asking price, sometimes around 110 per of the original asking price. Many Davis homes for sale zipped from “new listing” to “pending sale” in just one or two weekends. This keen competition among buyers pushed the average Davis home price from $829,394 in 2021, up to an average price of $913,953 in 2022. And the average price per square foot rose from $464

See MARKET, Page A5