Brookfield Homes: Trellis Residence 1
Just after seeing some of the bad news concerning the decline of home prices in November comes this good news; homes in the Southern California area are up overall, as well as home sales.
Let’s start with home prices first. Home prices went up from October to November by 1.8%, from $279,961 to $285,000. It’s still lower than its peak price in mid-2007 of $505,000, but peak pricing isn’t reasonable – they’ll take what they can get. That’s now 7 months in a row where prices have either gone up or held steady. What’s holding down home prices and sales is Los Angeles itself, which is still showing drastic declines in foreclosures and net worth of many of its neighborhoods.
Home sales increased 15% from the same period last year, and that makes 17 months in a row of increases from the previous year, though they still have a long way to go to reach their peak days. Many of the home sales were from houses and condos that were foreclosed on, around 39%. Strangely enough, 25% of the homes were purchased for the full amount.
The information comes from DataQuick, a California-based research firm. They also stated that the price of homes, though it went up, will probably continue staying low as the value of many neighborhoods has come down, and that most of the new sales are homes on the lower end of the market, where home buyers benefited the most from the tax credit.
There was also a bit of bad news. Foreclosures are still continuing, and the rate has been increasing. Their last figure shows foreclosures going at a rate of 2.4%, a 1.4% increase from October. And more foreclosures are expected because of rising unemployment and the continuing fallout from devaluing homes and short sales.
Still, many Realtors are optimistic because of the numbers, feeling as though things are about to steady, and some home builders are finally starting to come up with new housing community designs, though none seem ready to start building just yet.
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Mitch Mitchell is a consultant who writes and participates in many different fields, including real estate finance issues. 
It’s true that the building trade is slow right now, but with news like this, it wont be long before the real estate business picks up. Given that home property sales are up in cities all over California, this should lead to a trickle down effect for all in the trade. Maybe we are starting to see the much needed signs of a recovery in the real estate market after all.
It’s crazy to think just two short years ago the average home prices in Southern Cali were half a million dollars and now in the high $200,000′s. I can only imagine how many people are deeply upside down in their homes. It is great news that home prices are on the rise. Hopefully the trend continues!
This is encouraging but we still have to weather a large number of ARMs that are going to reset in 2010 – 1212. These homeowners will be in trouble no different that what people have experienced in 2007-2009 and thousands will end up facing foreclosure creating the excess inventory we presently have which has to be contributing to a slow recovery. So, wont 2010 through 2010 be more of the same for investors and retail buyers?
The housing price increase can only boost the housing in the California areas but the face that they are not huge rises is not a bad aspect as the American housing and financial economy get better, the house prices will keep growing but America is not rushing to mess up the housing market again.
It’ll be a good trend if we can extrapolate it to the rest of the economy.