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Paradise Valley Real Estate

April 24, 2010 // Comments Off

A rather affluent town in Maricopa County, the city of Paradise Valley, Arizona, is a suburb of the Phoenix metro area and is home a population of around $15,000. The city has a high-priced real estate, with many homes with values of $5 million to $20 million, and it was thus heavily impacted by the crash in the U.S. real estate market that began in 2008. Since then, the Paradise Valley real estate market has seen its ups and downs and is still searching for stabilization.

According to statistics made available by John Hall Associates, local Phoenix realtors, the number of active listings of Paradise Valley homes for sale has shown a general declining trend over the past 12 months. In April 2009, there were 582 homes for sale, and that number has since gradually fallen to 470 homes for sale in April.

Sales activity levels in Paradise Valley have also fluctuated but are now relatively in good shape, compared to a year earlier. In March 2009, there were just seven homes sold in Paradise Valley, the lowest figure of the last 12 months. That figure spiked for the year in December, when there were 43 homes sold, and has since leveled out to 30 homes sold in both March and February.

Foreclosures in Mesa have been up and down as well. There was a high of 37 foreclosure notices issued in March 2009. That figure fell to a low of 11 in November and most recently stood at 19 in March. There were nine trustee sales in March as well, slightly lower than the high of 14 in July and above the low of four in May and August. The price of Mesa homes per square foot has remained relatively stable. Homes for sale had an average price in March of $461 per square foot, just below the $510 per square foot price of one year ago. Homes sold, meanwhile, came in with an average price of $282 per square foot, down from a year ago’s figure of $319 per square foot.

Posted in Arizona

Palo Alto Real Estate

April 23, 2010 // Comments Off

One of the anchor cities in the Silicon Valley region, Palo Alto, California, lies in the San Francisco Bay area in northwest Santa Clara County. It is home to several high-tech firms and portions of the famed Stanford University. Though the market for Palo Alto real estate initially suffered some setbacks because of rough market conditions in the real economy, the real estate sector has begun to chart a smoother course and appears to be stabilizing while many surrounding markets remain in fluctuation.

Santa Clara County Association of Realtors statistics show that in March, there were 51 new listings of Palo Alto homes for sale, putting the inventory at 89. The month saw 27 sales, with homes spending an average of 62 days on the market before closing. The average sales price was $1.65 million while the median price was $1.4 million. Palo Alto condos saw 18 new listings for a total of 45 condos for sale in March. There were 11 condos closed upon, and they spent an average of just 30 days on the market before selling. The average sales price was $650,500 and the median $685,000.

Palo Alto’s quarterly statistics show improvement. The first quarter of 2010 saw 72 single-family homes sold in Palo Alto, up from just 50 one year ago. There were 26 condos sold in the first quarter, more than double the figure last year — just 12. Homes spent an average of 72 days on the market before selling in 2010′s first quarter, up from 56 a year ago. Condos spent an average of 59 days on the market, down from 65.

Prices showed encouraging signs as well. The median price for a single-family home sold in Palo Alto in the first quarter of 2010 was $1.43 million, up from $1.28 million a year ago. The median price for condos in the first quarter was $723,750, up from $696,500 in 2009′s first quarter. Single-family homes in the first quarter of 2010 received an average of 98.3% of the listing price, while condos received an average of 96.7% of their listing price.

Posted in California

Felton Real Estate

April 11, 2010 // Comments Off

A small community of only about 1,000 residents in the mountains of Santa Cruz County in northern California, the city of Felton is a middle-class census-designated place. Felton is a popular area because its home prices are lower than in many other areas of Santa Cruz County. The Felton real estate was hit in late 2008 at the onset of the downturn in the U.S. economy when the credit crisis began, and it saw homes values fall and foreclosures rise as residents struggled to stay in their now over-valued homes.

Since then, the market has been on a roller-coaster ride, with prices rising and falling with seemingly no logical explanation. In late 2009, prices seemed to stabilize, but the last month of the year saw the median price dip yet again. According to local realtor Jessica Wallace, the median price for homes sold in Felton throughout 2009 was $325,000, down from 2008′s figure of around $400,000. However, the yearly median improved from the beginning of the year; in February, the price was less than $250,000, and it hit its lowest point in May, at around $200,000. The end of the year saw four successive rises in median price, from July to November, before falling again in December to around $300,000 from $400,000-level figures in the previous months.

Some of the wacky sales prices of Felton homes for sale can be attributed to a large number of low-priced foreclosures. The Felton market saw a bright spot in sales volume, which totaled 95 for the year, up by nearly a third from 2008, when there were just 64 homes sold. August and September saw the highest numbers of sales activity, probably because buyers were scrambling to close on their homes before the government’s tax rebate program was set to expire in November. (It has since been extended.)

Posted in California