Suddenly, the game got affordable again.

Just weeks ago, tech worker Brian Jacobosky moved into a Folsom home that once would have cost in the $600,000s.

But the move-up buyer from Arizona paid in the "mid-fours," he said. The deal was a distress sale that helped owners out of a jam, spared a bank further losses and settled his family in a suburban city of 70,000. Jacobosky also caught interest rates drifting toward 5 percent.

"It was a case of biding our time and waiting for the right opportunity," he said.

In 2008, long to be remembered for fear and opportunity, capital-area investor Scott Arbuckles and partners also saw the sudden opening.

"In a period of a couple months, the banks started selling properties at prices that would allow an investor to come in and make in excess of 10 percent per year," he said.

Last year, he bought eight Sacramento County repos priced below $120,000 to fix up and rent. By December, investors like him accounted for one in four home sales in the county – the most since mid-2004 – according to statistics released Tuesday by MDA DataQuick of La Jolla.

DataQuick's numbers paint turbulent, chaotic 2008 as the year that finally pushed the reluctant buyer off the fence. The year just ended was the first since 2004 to see annual home sales rise instead of decline.

DataQuick counted 41,030 closed escrows in the region in 2008 – 7,763 more than 2007.

The yearlong sales uptick in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties signaled a market enduring huge stresses, but also affordable to many first-time homebuyers for the first time since the earliest years of this decade.

They included Sacramento County employee Casandra Leon, 26, who paid $235,000 in February for a bank repo in Elk Grove, and construction worker Travis Watson, 25, who bought a bank repo in Galt for $181,000. There were thousands like them.

Steadily, they pushed down the number of for-sale signs in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties – from 13,445 in January to 9,526 in December, according to Sacramento researcher TrendGraphix.

In December, 2,485 homes total sold in Sacramento County. And a dip in the county's median sales price to $176,000, lowest since May 2001, drove 2,148 existing-home sales, highest for the month since 2004.

Elsewhere in December:

• Placer County had 546 sales and a median price of $317,250. That was down 15 percent from a year earlier.

• El Dorado County had 160 sales and a median price of $330,000. It fell 24.5 percent from December 2007.

• Yolo County reported 231 sales and a median price of $281,500. It was down 14.8 percent from December 2007.

• Sutter County tallied 115 sales and a median price of $173,500. That was down 30.7 percent from a year earlier.

• Yuba County's 104 sales had a median price of $160,000. It fell 34.7 percent from December 2007.

• Nevada County reported 78 sales and a 20.2 percent annual drop in median prices, to $331,000.

• Amador County had 29 sales and a median price of $270,000. It was down 18.6 percent from December 2007.

Free-falling median prices throughout 2008 testified mainly to lenders' efforts to dump repo properties after 19,000 foreclosures in the region from January through September. DataQuick will report fourth quarter foreclosure numbers this month.

The median price in Sacramento County, hardest hit by the region's foreclosure crisis, fell almost $100,000 the past year. But that doesn't mean everyone's house has fallen so far, analysts said.

"That decline in the median definitely overstates the decline for the typical house," said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. "It speaks to the declines in some of the hardest-hit areas. It's so heavy on foreclosures."

Even as repos pushed the region's 2008 sales within a shout of 2006 totals, overall sales were still among the lowest since 1998, said DataQuick.

"It's fair to say we've seen the beginning of a recovery in sales," said LePage. "But it's a strange recovery that's not as broad-based as you'd usually see. A lot of starter homes sold and nothing happened. A lender gets the money back, but no one is moving up."

Seven in 10 December sales in Sacramento County were bank repos, he said.

In December, 3,748 new and existing homes changed hands in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties, DataQuick reported. That was up from 3,321 in November, a typical December sales bounce. The surge came as interest rates for 30-year loans began to reach historic lows.

That has continued into this year. Rates dipped below 5 percent last week, a bonanza for buyers with good credit.

The outlook for 2009: more of the same, said LePage.

"I think so much is riding on the health of the job market this year in Sacramento. For the market to really stabilize, you have to end that vicious cycle of foreclosures in hard-hit areas, and it's going to be hard to do that if more people are thrown out of work."

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