By Jim Wasserman, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Feb. 7--Sales of homes costing $1 million or more fell sharply across the capital region and throughout California last year as buyers remained wary, large mortgages were hard to get and more homes slipped below the benchmark value, researcher MDA Dataquick reported Thursday.

The La Jolla firm counted 291 sales of homes priced above $1 million in 2009 in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo and Nevada counties. A year earlier, the tally was 502 in the eight-county region. The capital region accounted for 1.6 percent of high-end sales in a state where coastal regions rule the luxury market sector.

DataQuick counted 18,621 California sales with price tags of $1 million or more. It was a fourth straight year of decline in the state after luxury sales crested at 54,773 in 2005.

Nearly 80 percent of last year's million-dollar and higher sales in the capital area were in Placer, El Dorado and Nevada counties, according to DataQuick statistics. All are home to high-end resort markets in and near Lake Tahoe.

Sales fell from 2008 in all three counties. Lake Tahoe real estate firm Chase International reported 104 sales of lake-area homes valued at $1 million or higher in 2009. The previous year's count was 134.

Don't count out the wealthy, though, said the firm's owner, Shari Chase.

"If you look at high-ticket purchases, those people are not going to be affected by any of the economic conditions. It's about whether they want to go for their lifestyle," she said.

DataQuick President John Walsh said traditional million-dollar markets like Hillsborough, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach and Santa Barbara "are holding up relatively well." Expensive newer markets that "emerged four or years ago are not," he said.

Mike Lyon, head of Sacramento's Lyon Real Estate, attributed part of the capital-area sales decline to significant "discounting" at the harder-to-sell high end.

DataQuick said 29 percent of California's luxury home buyers paid cash. Lending institutions most likely to help the others were Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Union Bank, the researcher reported.

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Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at sacbee.com/blogs.

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