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Palm Springs Real Estate

June 6, 2010 // Comments Off

The average price of a Palm Springs home for sale, along with the average sales price of other Coachella Valley communities’ homes for sale, rallied in the month of April. According to a May 29, 2010 article in KPSP 2 News, “If you’re trying to sell a home or condo in the valley there is some good news. Compared to the same time period last year home prices are up quite a bit…According to a report just released from the Palm Springs Regional Association of Realtors, the median home price in the Coachella Valley rose 31% in April, compared to the same time last year.” The article by Jackie Pedroza went on to say that “The median price jumped from $150-thousand dollars to more than $190-thousand dollars…Currently across the valley, there are around 5 thousand active listings for homes and condos. Of those 40 percent are priced at or below 300-thousand dollars.”

This same positive news for the Palm Springs real estate market was reported on by a May 25, 2010 article in the Desert Sun. This piece found that “The median price for Coachella Valley home sales in April rose 31 percent in April compared to the same time last year, Palm Springs Regional Association of Realtors data show. It rose to $197,040 from the $150,140 median in April 2009.” The article by Debra Gruszecki continued to say that “Scott Newton, president of the Palm Springs Regional Association of Realtors, said the April numbers show a market that is moving out of high-season and is so focused on median price that inventory is getting low. ‘That creates higher demand,’ he said. ‘Higher demand creates slightly higher prices.’”

A high foreclosure rate has led to growth in the number of short sales among Palm Springs real estate, according to a May 23, 2010 article also in the Desert Sun. This piece noted that “With foreclosures continuing to pummel the Coachella Valley floor and home values dropping real estate agents are working with property owners in bigger numbers to drive short sales…Real estate experts say they’re seeing spurts of multiple bids and cash buys on homes priced below $250,000 by investors with deep pockets, buyers from other states or residents with equity in their home, a move-up mentality or frazzled nerves from a volatile stock market.”

Posted in California

Colorado real estate market

May 25, 2010 // Comments Off

The Colorado real estate market seems to be rallying strongly, especially when considering the metropolitan areas of Denver and Colorado Springs. Although foreclosures continue to increase slightly, the inventory of foreclosures is being cleared more rapidly than in previous months. This is according to a May 13, 2010 article in the Denver Business Journal, which found that “Foreclosure sales in Colorado shot up 53.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010 from the same period a year earlier, and new foreclosure filings rose 6 percent, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs’ Division of Housing reported Thursday.” The piece by Mark Harden continued to say that “But officials said the year-ago foreclosure-sales total was pushed down by a national moratorium on processing foreclosures. They said that between first-quarter 2008 and first-quarter 2010, a comparison that straddles the moratorium, foreclosure sales rose a more modest 13.3 percent, or an average of 6.7 percent per year.”

Colorado homes for sale in Denver sold for slightly more compared to last year, according to a May 11, 2010 article in the Denver Business Journal. This article found that “Single-family home prices in metro Denver slipped in March from the previous months but rose 4.1 percent from 12 months earlier, according to a report Tuesday from Integrated Asset Services LLC.” The piece, written by Mark Harden, continued to say that “The monthly ‘IAS360 House Price Index’ report from IAS, a Denver-based default-mortgage services company, said the median single-family home price in the Denver-Aurora metro area declined 0.7 percent in March, following a 0.2 percent rise in February. But year over year, the index showed a 4.1 percent increase in the area’s median price between March 2009 and March 2010.”

Colorado real estate in the Colorado Springs area also rallied strongly in recent months, according to a May 5, 2010 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette. The piece, written by Rich Laden, continued to say that “Colorado Springs-area home prices and sales rose again last month, the latest in a string of improved showings the local resale market. Home sales totaled 792 in April, an 11.9 percent increase over the same month last year, according to a Pikes Peak Association of Realtors report.”

Posted in Colorado

Newport Beach real estate market

May 23, 2010 // Comments Off

The Newport Beach real estate market is currently showing mixed signs, but is one of the riskiest housing markets in the country. According to a May 12, 2010 article in the Orange County Register, “New National Association of Realtor home price data for metropolitan areas shows an Orange County house costing 2.93 times what the median-priced American home sold in the first quarter. That’s no bargain, despite a horrific drop in local home prices: Last time this so-called ‘Orange premium’ was this high was 2008 as the market was toppling.” The piece by Jon Lasner continued to say that “Curiously, this ‘Orange premium’ in this downturn did not hit the lows seen in the mid-1990s real estate recession. The index bottomed at pricing of 2.38 American homes for my ‘Orange premium.’ The recent upswing in the ‘Orange premium’ could mean that the emerging firmness in local house pricing may be ahead of the overall economics.”

The average price of a Newport Beach home for sale, along with Orange County in general, rallied in the month of March, according to an April 22, 2010 article in the Orange County Business Journal. This piece found that “The median price of an existing Orange County home rose by more than $10,000 in March from February, spurred in large part by low mortgage rates and generally affordable prices, the California Association of Realtors said on Thursday.” The piece, written by Mark Mueller, continued to say that “The median price for an existing stand-alone OC home sold in March was $493,120, a 2% increase from February, and a nearly 11% increase from a year ago. The number of sales here in March jumped 39% from a month ago, and was up about 15% from a year ago, the Realtor association said.”

This good news for Newport Beach real estate, however, still does not alleviate the huge risk involved in the Orange County real estate market. According to a May 2, 2010 article in the OC Metro, “Orange County’s housing market is among the riskiest in the nation, according to a new study from Walnut Creek-based PMI Group.”

Posted in California

Las Vegas real estate market

May 22, 2010 // Comments Off

The Las Vegas real estate market continues to be one of the most distressed areas in the entire nation, with home sales continuing to decline and foreclosure rates remaining at extremely high levels. According to a May 10, 2010 article in the Las Vegas Sun, “The federal tax credit designed to spur home sales appears to have ended on a whimper in Las Vegas and may foretell a downturn in the housing market in the coming months, analysts said. The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported Monday that sales in April fell 7 percent compared to March and dropped nearly 8 percent compared to April 2009.”

The piece, composed by Buck Wargo, continued to say that “The drop off in the year-over-year sales is the first since March 2008. The decline was unexpected since April was the last month for buyers to sign contracts for new and existing homes. Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research, who monitors the Southern Nevada housing market, said he believes the drop off in sales is a reflection of the declining amount of foreclosure properties in the market.” The only potential bright spot for the Las Vegas real estate market was a slight increase in home prices as reported by Fox 5 News.

The extremely high rate of foreclosures facing Las Vegas homes for sale was reported in an April 29, 2010 article in the Atlantic. This piece said that “Maybe they should call it Foreclosure City instead of Sin City. Las Vegas was again the source of the highest foreclosures density in the U.S. during the first quarter, according to a new RealtyTrac report documenting foreclosure rates in the 209 largest metropolitan statistical areas. It had an incredible one foreclosure for every 28 properties. That’s even worse than Nevada’s overall 1-in-33 foreclosure rate for the quarter. The city’s foreclosure density was also nearly 5x the national average.” The article, written by Daniel Indiviglio, continued to say that “Las Vegas is a prototypical example of this phenomenon. It has 19% fewer foreclosures than a year earlier, but 13% more than a quarter earlier.”

Posted in Nevada

Columbus real estate

May 18, 2010 // Comments Off

The Columbus real estate is facing mixed signals, with some suggesting that a recovery might be imminent and others pointing towards a continued slide. According to an April 23, 2010 article in the Columbus Dispatch, “Propelled by bargain prices and the imminent end of a federal tax credit, homebuyers snatched up properties throughout central Ohio and the rest of the nation in March. In the Columbus area, 1,704 homes changed hands during the month – 25 percent more than in March 2009. Statewide, sales rose 15.5 percent, and across the nation, they were up 6.8 percent.” The piece, written by Jim Weiker, continued to say that “Central Ohio homes sold for an average of $151,719 in March, 6 percent more than a year ago. The average home sold in 89 days, almost three weeks faster than last March. Real-estate agents and builders are reporting a rush of activity as buyers try to claim up to $8,000 in tax credits.”

Commercial real estate continues to be one problem for the Ohio and Columbus real estate markets. According to a Mary 11, 2010 article from WKYC News, “As home foreclosures continue to sweep the country, experts say the next shoe to drop will be in the commercial real estate market. Between lenders and unemployment numbers, the perfect storm is about to hit according to real estate analysts. ‘Well, commercial real estate tends to lag behind the residential,’ says George Pofok, Vice President at CRESCO Real Estate.” The piece, composed by Kyle Maureen, continued to say that “The writing is on the wall. Signs are everywhere that the commercial real estate market is in jeopardy. For lease, for sale, and some, foreclosure.”

Foreclosures were another potential stumbling block for Columbus homes for sale, according to an April 30, 2010 article in Business First of Columbus. The article, written by Kevin Kemper, found that “Home ownership in Central Ohio has continued its dramatic erosion this year as another wave of foreclosures washes over the region. Despite the improving economy and the best efforts of the homeowner-assistance programs, 3,714 foreclosure-lawsuits were filed in the eight-county Columbus region in the first quarter, up 5.4 percent from a year ago.”

Posted in Ohio

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

El Dorado Hills

March 23, 2010 // Comments Off

El Dorado Hills is a census-desginated place in the Sacramento region that is home to some exclusive and high-priced real estate communities. The El Dorado Hills real estate has, unsurprisingly, suffered in recent years as the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble dampened the appetite and mood for real estate transactions in the area as buyers hesitated or were unable to secure financing and sellers saw the values of their homes plummet.

From November of 2009 through January of this year, there were 149 homes, two condos and 10 land properties up for sale in El Dorado Hills, according to RE/Max, a local realtor agency. Of those properties, 48 that sold were bank-owned properties and 39 were short sales. The range of prices of properties sold stretched from as little as $150,000 for a condo to $1.2 million for a more than 5,000-square-foot home in Serrano, a short sale, as it was listed at more than $1.5 million.

In the middle of February of this year, there were 294 El Dorado Hills homes for sale listed, a decline of more than 20% from September 2009. The average asking price was around $665,500, down more than 8% from six months ago, while the median price was $522,500, down around 4.9% from six months ago. Of those 294 homes for sale, 21 are bank-owned, 45 are active short sales and  86 are short sales with accepted offers awaiting bank approval.

From the three-month period of November 2009 through January 2010, there were 149 homes sold in the community, an improvement of almost 10% from the previous three-month period. The average sale price during the November-January period was just over $482,300, down only 0.02% from the previous period. Likewise, the median price was $432,000, down only 0.35% from the previous period. Homes spent longer on the market during the most recent period, at 113 days versus just 100 days from August through October. The market, however, ended up with just a 5.9 months’ worth of inventory, an improvement of the last period’s 8.1 months, as some of the excess inventory was cleared out of the market.

Posted in California

La Mesa Real Estate

March 14, 2010 // Comments Off

Southern California is well known as being a hot place for American real estate. When prices go up, the area has had some of the highest prices in the country, and when prices fell, the region was home to some of the nation’s hardest-hit communities, which lost significant amounts in value. In La Mesa, a city of about 55,000 in San Diego County, however, the worst appears to be behind the community as prices and values show a generally upward-bending trend.

According to information from the San Diego Association of Realtors, La Mesa real estate showed marked improvement. The median price for a home in the early months of 2010 was $350,000, mostly unchanged from previous months, showing a stabilization in the market. Additionally, foreclosures have been falling in the area. Throughout the entire county, foreclosures were down to just 986 in January, from more than 1,500 in December.

The federal government’s plan enacted in 2009 and later extended through 2010 to offer select homebuyers tax rebates and incentives of up to $8,000 for buying a home has helped move many of the La Mesa homes for sale off the market, though many were sold at prices lower than they were previously purchased for. In December 2009, an index of housing prices showed that San Diego County’s home prices rose 0.1% from the previous month, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, which was the eighth straight month that the county’s real estate market rose, making for the longest streak among 20 metro areas the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index monitors.

The index showed that prices of homes for sale in the county, in which La Mesa is located, rose 2.7%  in December year-over-year. The index stood at 156.29, up 8.2% from a low of 144.43 in April but still 7.6% below the record high of 250.34 from November 2005. The index was set at 100 for January 2000.

Posted in California