SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) – The real estate tracking firm DataQuick said Thursday that the median price for homes in the nine-county San Francisco Bay area reached $555,000 in June, an increase of 6.9 percent over the previous month.

The real estate data firm is reporting the median year-over-year price paid for a Bay Area home rose at its fastest pace on record in June.

DataQuick said Thursday that the rise was the result of disappearing distress sales, an improving economy and mortgage rates remaining low.

However, the number of homes sold dropped 7.5 percent to 7,897 in June. DataQuick attributes the decrease to the number of homes for sale falling short of demand and an easing of purchases by cash and investor buyers.

The real estate information service says last month’s sales were 20.9 percent below the June average of 9,993 sales.

• See the full DataQuick report and County-by-County sales breakdown

Home prices in the Bay Area are through the roof according to a new study by Data Quick.

Back in 2009, during the depths of the recession, the median price of a home was $290,000. Now that figure is $555,000; six percent higher than last month and 33 percent higher than one year ago.

Data Quick Analyst Andrew LePage said it’s a matter of supply and demand. We’ve seen sales fall on a year-over-year basis for the last five months in a row.

Richard Green with the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California said much of it is the shortage of homes for sale.

“Inventories are very small,” he said adding that there are many more all cash transactions than ever, which drives up the market for higher-end homes and drives up sale prices.

Speculators have said that things could ease with fewer homes underwater, prompting sales and increasing supply. In addition, developers are also starting to build new homes again.

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Article source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/18/median-bay-area-home-price-jumps-again-as-inventory-remains-tight/

Home prices rose, just barely, in the second quarter of this year annually for the first time since 2007, according to online real estate firm Zillow. That prompted the popular site to call a “bottom” to home prices nationally. The increase was a mere 0.2 percent, but in today’s touch and go housing recovery, that was enough.

Nearly one third of the 167 markets Zillow tracks in this survey saw annual price gains from a year ago.

“After four months with rising home values and increasingly positive forecast data, it seems clear that the country has hit a bottom in home values,” said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. “The housing recovery is holding together despite lower-than-expected job growth, indicating that it has some organic strength of its own.”

Zillow’s report, which compares prices of homes sold in the same neighborhood, also showed a stronger 2.1 percent gain quarter to quarter, which is the biggest uptick since 2005. The biggest price gains, however, are in the markets that saw the biggest price drops during the latest housing crash. Phoenix, for example, saw a 12 percent annual price gain on the Zillow index.

That has other analysts claiming that the overall surge in national prices is due to price bubbles in certain markets.

“Strong demand, particularly in areas of California, Arizona and Nevada, are pushing up home prices very quickly in the short-term. And because many of the home purchases in these areas are cash transactions, there appears to be less braking of prices by our current appraisal system than seen in other parts of the country,” noted Thomas Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys and chief analyst for HousingPulse. “The trend raises the distinct possibility of housing price bubbles emerging in some of these hot housing markets.”

The supply of foreclosed properties for sale has been dropping steadily, as lenders try to modify more loans or actively pursue foreclosure alternatives, like short sales (where the home is sold for less than the value of the mortgage). Investors, eager to take advantage of the hot rental market, are having to spread out to more markets in order to find the best deals.

“We were heavily into Phoenix early in the cycle. Those markets are heating up,” said James Breitenstein, CEO of investment firm Landsmith in an interview on CNBC Monday. “We see a shift more to the east, states like North Carolina, Michigan, Florida.”

While home prices on the Zillow index are improving most in formerly distressed markets, like Miami, Orlando and much of California, they are still dropping in other non-distressed markets, like St. Louis (down 4 percent annually) Chicago (down 5.8 percent annually) and Philadelphia (down 3.5 percent annually).

“Those people looking at current results and calling a bottom are being dangerously short-sighted,” said Michael Feder, CEO of Radar Logic, a real estate data and analytics company. “Not only are the immediate signs inconclusive, but the broad dynamics are still quite scary. We think housing is still a short.”

Radar Logic sees price increases as well, but blames that on mild winter weather that temporarily boosted demand. This means there will be payback, or weakness in prices during the latter half of this year. And even without the weather hypothesis, they see further trouble ahead:

“On the supply side, higher prices will entice financial institutions to sell more of their inventories of foreclosed homes and allow households that were previously unable to sell due to negative equity to put their homes on the market. As a result, the supply of homes for sale will increase, placing downward pressure on prices. On the demand side, rising prices could reduce investment buying,” according to the Radar Logic report.

Investors are driving much of the housing market today, anywhere from one third to one quarter of home sales. That makes these supposedly national price gains more precarious than ever, because they are based on a finite supply of distressed homes and that supply is dependent on the nation’s big banks. First time home buyers, who should be 40 percent of the market, are barely making up one third, and millions of potential move-up buyers are trapped in their homes due to negative and near negative equity.

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