An empty shell occupies 9,500 addresses across the Sacramento region %u2013 one closed business for every six still open, according to a Bee analysis of U.S. Postal Service data.

That’s more dormant businesses than in 17 entire states, including Utah, Arkansas and New Mexico.

You can see it on Madison Avenue in Fair Oaks, where Mike Castagnola is liquidating his party supply store, counting down the final days on a business with a 30-year run.

It’s just as apparent on Lake Tahoe Boulevard, the main strip cutting through South Lake Tahoe, where James Dalton counts five vacant businesses within sight of his antiques shop %u2013 and plans to add his store to that number.

And it’s vivid along Main Street in Woodland, where Jill Caunedo happily ran a bagel and coffee shop %u2013 until about two weeks ago.

“Thirty percent of all the businesses (on Main Street) are vacant,” Caunedo said, adding that she is left to sell her former cafe’s equipment for a quarter on the dollar.

A glut of empty businesses means less sales tax revenue for the four-county region, fewer jobs, fewer shopping options, less commercial construction, plenty of thwarted dreams.

It also makes for depressing scenes during the morning commute: the empty Hollywood Video, for instance, near Folsom Boulevard and Howe Avenue, with its large red sign fruitlessly offering “New DVDs for Sale“; the health store just down the road surrounded by vacant storefronts and halfheartedly removed gang graffiti.

No California county has a higher proportion of shuttered businesses than Sacramento, according to the data. Placer County ranks third.

As of September, the number of dormant addresses in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer and El Dorado counties had jumped more than 50 percent during the recession, according to the postal service data, which logs formerly occupied commercial addresses %u2013 office and retail %u2013 where mail has not been picked up for more than 90 days.

There is some hope. Besides a nebulous optimism that the economy may have bottomed out, commercial rents have fallen sharply as supply exceeds demand. Entrepreneurs with cash can get a deal and jump-start a new business.

But cautious and troubled banks aren’t granting many loans to launch enterprises. Many businesses and offices are stuck with rents they can’t afford, while relocation costs keep them from moving. And consumers and companies have changed their spending patterns, growing accustomed to smaller offices and brown-bag lunches.

“Retail’s pretty much been the hardest hit,” said Garrick Brown, research director for the Sacramento office of real estate firm Colliers International. “The pool of new businesses is gone %u2026 and small business lending has fallen off the cliff.”

Collateral damage

Monday, February 8th, 2010, 2:41 pm

Million-dollar home sales continue to decline in California, as price declines are bringing homes below the $1m threshold and hesitant buyers have yet to return to the market, according to property data provider MDA DataQuick.

A total of 18,621 California homes sold for $1m or more last year, down 23.8% from 24,436 sales in 2008. It marks the fourth consecutive year of sales volume declines and follows similar year-over-year declines in 2007 (42,506 sales), 2006 (50,010) and the peak year of 2005 (54,773), DataQuick said.

The decline in higher-priced house sales was countered by higher sales in all price levels. Total California home sales increased 16.9% to 460,166 in 2009, from 393,703 in 2008, DataQuick said.

“Prestige home sales are a unique sub-category of the real estate market,” said DataQuick president John Walsh. “The buyers and sellers respond to a different set of motivations. In the multi-million-dollar price ranges, decisions are largely discretionary and aren’t as dependent upon jobs, prices and interest rates the way they are for most buyers and sellers.”

The overwhelming majority — 15,569, or 83% — of homes that sold for more than $1m priced between $1m and $2m. There were 1,902 homes sold between $2m and $3m. Another 590 units sold between $3m and $4m, 228 sold between $4m and $5m and 332 sold for more than $5m.

DataQuick calculates its figures from public records confirming the presence of a buyer, a seller, money transfer, and legal transfer of property ownership, including sales to companies and trusts. The data does not include property swaps, sales of multiple lots, sales where no price or loan amount was available, property tear-downs, or large farm or ranch properties.

The largest and most expensive purchase DataQuick confirmed for 2009 was a 22,721-square-foot, 9-bedroom, 10-bathroom Bel Air house built in 2008 that sold for $26.5m in July.

Million-dollar home sales in Riverside County dropped 48.6% last year, while they dropped 13.3% in Los Angeles County, DataQuick said. Sales in Portola Valley and Atherton in San Mateo County, Newport Beach in Orange County, Ross in Marin County and Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County were almost exclusively million-dollar or higher transactions.

New homes accounted for 1,457 of last year’s $1m-plus sales, down 50.3% from 2,933 for 2008. There were 1,542 condo sales priced at $1m or more, down 34.7% from 2,362 in 2008. The median size for a million-dollar home was 2,646 square feet, with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

There were 4,925 notices of default issued in 2009on homes previously sold for $1m or more, while the number of trustee deeds, which count total foreclosures, was 2,698 in 2009.

DataQuick said 29% of buyers in the $1m-plus range paid cash, up from 24% in 2008. In the $5m or higher category, two-thirds of buyers paid cash. The median down payment for a buyer who financed a purchase was 39.4% of the purchase price.

DataQuick said the lenders that extended the most credit for $1m or more home purchases were Bank of America (BAC: 14.28 -1.38%), Wells Fargo (WFC: 26.42 -0.04%) and Union Bank (UB: 0.00 N/A).

Write to Austin Kilgore.

The author held no relevant investments.