It is not exactly a trend, but for the second-straight month, U.S. home prices saw year-over-year gains.

Including distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales), prices rose 1.1 percent in April, according to a new report from analytics firm CoreLogic.

Excluding distressed sales, prices rose 2.6 percent. Prices have not been up two months in a row since June 2010, when the home buyer tax credit was in force.

The national gains, however, belie a deeply disparate state-to-state housing market.

Home prices rose dramatically in markets where distressed homes make up the majority of sales, like Arizona, up 8.8 percent annually and Florida, up 5.5 percent. That’s because inventories of foreclosures have shrunk due to more slowdowns in bank processing.

Meanwhile other states with relatively smaller shares of distressed sales saw prices plunge: Delaware, down 10 percent, Alabama down 4.4 percent and Connecticut down over 2 percent, according to CoreLogic.

The spring sales season, while not exactly robust, was busy, especially for investors in distressed properties.

As for the summer, the numbers do not look as strong. After two months of gains, asking prices on for-sale homes, a two-month leading indicator, were unchanged in May month-to-month, according to a new report from sale site Trulia.com.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/47689898?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Just over 11 million Americans moved between March of 2010 and March of 2011, according to a new report from the U.S. Census.

That might sound like a lot, but it’s actually a record low, down from 12 and a half million who moved the previous year.

The record high was 46 million movers in 1984-85, and you have to factor in that the population has grown immensely since then.

The housing crash has left Americans stagnant, but even worse, it has left homeowners trapped. The decline in the mobility rate of those who already own homes was even more dramatic. Just 4.7 percent of homeowners moved in the past year, down from 5.2 percent the previous year, according to the Census. That translates into 9.7 million homeowners, again a record low.

The immobility of current homeowners is a huge drag on the economy; when you move, you spend money not just on the new house, but on renovations, moving trucks, travel expenses, possible temporary housing, even food when you restock the new refrigerator. There are initial payments, like setting up the new cable, installing the wifi, putting in an alarm system, registering your car in another state. Endless sectors of the economy, and even local government, benefit from American mobility, most of all being the job market itself.

Last week I heard a statistic that a few thousand jobs stood open in the month of October, unable to be filled.

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Meanwhile, memories fade, cases grow years old and victims’ families lose hope for justice.

At a time of budget cuts to the superior court system, the District Attorney’s Office has 11 pending murder cases that are 4 years old and another three cases in which at least seven years have passed since charges were filed.

District Attorney George Gascón says he has made speeding up the prosecution of homicide cases a priority of his administration.

“You cannot do a homicide [prosecution] overnight obviously, but … assuming that there are no unusual circumstances in that case, two or three years should be a more than reasonable time for a homicide to be tried,” Gascón said.

That’s the average timetable, officials in several Bay Area district attorney’s offices agree, given the amount of investigation often required in homicide cases and procedural issues in the court system.

“Two years is sort of our target here, and [then] we start pressing for a trial,” San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. “If it goes beyond that, the cases begin to become stale.”

Prosecutor Braden Woods, who heads the criminal division of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, described delays as “the ultimate open wound or sore” for family members of murder victims. While a conviction can never bring the victim back, “To have a case drag on for years, it’s like a constant source of irritation for a family,” he said.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who oversees the county jails, agrees.

“There’s the whole issue of justice itself,” Hennessey said. “What does it say to the families of a murdered person, or witnesses, neighbors … what does it say to them about the fact that it’s taken five, six or seven years and this case still hasn’t been resolved? It casts a bad light on the justice system.”

San Francisco jails are expected to fill up in the coming year with inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes who are being transferred from state prisons beginning Oct. 1.

“It frustrates me,” Hennessey said. “When you have a high-security person who’s in custody for seven years, they’re tying up this very valuable jail real estate.”

High-security prisoners pose a risk to others and themselves, Hennessey said. “Because you have to put them in with other high-security prisoners, and that tends to lead to bad things happening every once and a while,” he said.

Hundreds of felony cases await trial at any given time in San Francisco, while there are only seven felony-trial courtrooms in which to squeeze them.

The court is “conscientiously trying to move these older cases, in particular homicides,” Superior Court spokeswoman Ann Donlan said. But she acknowledged “it can take some time to accomplish that.”

The judge who assigns cases to court must also take into account defendants’ constitutional right to a speedy trial and attorneys’ schedules and lack of readiness, Donlan said.

Even when murder suspects are known to police and prosecutors, there can be delays, such as in the shooting death in August of German tourist Mechthild Schröer, who was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout near Union Square while visiting The City with her husband. Arrests were finally made in May.

“Witness cooperation, witnesses coming forward, is a huge struggle when it comes to the prosecution of murder cases,” Woods said.

For instance, the trial of the suspect in 2008’s triple murder of Tony, Michael and Matthew Bologna has been delayed while prosecutors await testimony from several possible witnesses who also are testifying in the ongoing trial of seven alleged members of the violent gang MS-13.

Understaffing in the homicide unit also contributes to the backlog, Woods said. Right now, seven prosecutors each handle between 10 and 11 murder cases, involving 14 to 15 defendants, he said.

“It’s a bad practice,” Woods said.

Gascón had secured funding in this year’s budget to add another homicide prosecutor this fall, Woods said.

By contrast, Wagstaffe said San Mateo County’s two full-time homicide prosecutors are handling 15 of the county’s 17 pending murder cases, eight or fewer cases each. San Mateo County’s murder caseload only goes back to 2008, he said, although one 1999 case is awaiting retrial.

Wagstaffe said courtroom availability is not an issue in his county, although he noted that it doesn’t face the same amount of crime as San Francisco.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys often claim that the other side is delaying a case by either withholding evidence or filing endless motions. However, one defense attorney said caution is warranted in murder cases.

“When people are looking at spending the rest of their life in jail, there’s a premium on making sure the case is thoroughly investigated and litigated,” said Bob Dunlap, manager of the felony unit for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

Dunlap said his office is defending nearly half of the pending homicide cases, and almost all of them are getting to trial within two to three years.

“Everyone involved, they really are doing the best they can,” Dunlap said. “If there were more courtrooms available, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Dunlap said the sometimes-frosty relationship between his office and the District Attorney’s Office has improved since Gascón was appointed in January.

“And I do think part of it is attributable to Gascón,” Dunlap said. “There have been more and more fruitful discussions over resolving homicide cases since he’s begun.”

Such discussions “used to be nonexistent, or rare” under former District Attorney Kamala Harris, Dunlap said.

aburack@sfexaminer.com

Some cold cases move ahead, while others remain stalled

Five recent convictions in the past four months — four for murder and one for voluntary manslaughter — have helped ease the homicide backlog in the District Attorney’s Office, but several old cases remain.

One of the oldest is the 1981 murder of  24-year-old Annie Barcelon. On Nov. 26 of that year, she and her roommate were returning from a Thanksgiving party to their Park Merced home. Barcelon let her roommate out of the car and went to park the vehicle, but never returned. Her body was found the next day under a stairway in the basement of their building. She was found to have been raped and strangled.

The cold case was charged in 2004 after a DNA hit linked an Oregon prison inmate incarcerated on a separate sexual assault case, Lance Ford, to Barcelon’s slaying. Ford, now 55, is finally set to go to trial in October.

In another cold case that went to trial this year, a jury in May found Dwight Culton, 62, guilty of first-degree murder in the 1984 killing of 43-year-old Joan Baldwin at an auto body shop just blocks away from the Hall of Justice. A DNA hit in that case was made in 2006.

“The fact that we were able to solve a 1984 case is fantastic, but we filed it in ’06 and we just got a verdict in 2011,” prosecutor Braden Woods said. “That’s a case that’s been kicking around for way too long.”

Woods said he also was frustrated with the progress of the case of Napoleon Brown, 39, accused of murder in the 2000 death of a 25-year-old woman, Lenties White, who had been carjacked by suspects fleeing a Marina robbery. The suspects pushed her out of her car on the Golden Gate Bridge, and she was fatally struck by another driver.

Although Brown was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and carjacking in 2005, a judge later found the defense attorney had been ineffective and granted a new trial on the murder charge.

Woods said prosecutors wanted to retry Brown immediately, but the defense was able to postpone the trial while Brown appealed his robbery conviction. That conviction was upheld in 2009.

“So now we’ve been trying to move the case forward,” Woods said.

Brown returns to court for a hearing this month.

Gathering dust

San Francisco’s oldest murder cases still awaiting trial:

Napoleon Brown: Charged in 2001 with the 2000 murder of Lenties White, 25, who was pushed from a carjacked vehicle and fatally struck by another car; hearing Aug. 30, case still awaiting retrial or possible settlement.

Lance Ford: Charged in 2004 with the 1981 rape and strangulation murder of Annie Barcelon, 24; trial scheduled to begin in October.

Thomas Hanley and Ivan Gonzalez: Charged in 2004 with the 2004 stabbing murder of Hanley’s adoptive mother, Anne Outin, 66; hearing Friday, trial date not yet set.

Awaiting trial

Pending murder cases charged in Bay Area:

San Francisco: 75 cases involving 100 defendants since 2001

Alameda County: 117 cases involving 153 defendants since 2006

San Mateo County: 17 cases involving 24 defendants since 2008

Santa Clara County: 83 cases involving 126 defendants

Marin County: Seven cases since 2009

Source: District attorney’s offices

Article source: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/crime/2011/08/homicide-backlog-could-grow-drastic-cuts-courtroom-budgets

Home News San Francisco Real Estate Prices Rise as Inventory Falls

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By Brandon Cornett | 7/14/11
© 2011, All rights reserved

Recent reports show San Francisco real estate prices rising, partly due to a reduction in housing inventory. It’s a blip on the EKG of an otherwise flat-lining housing market.

The Alamo Square neighborhood of San Francisco

On Monday, real estate analytics firm Altos Research released its latest market report. The company’s “Real-Time Housing Market Update” focuses on the same 20 metro areas featured in the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Their latest data shows that home prices in San Francisco rose 2.34 percent in June, compared to the previous month.

That’s not a big leap by any means. But it was the second largest increase of all 20 metro areas included in the report.

San Francisco took the lead in the three-month category. Based on data for April, May and June, San Francisco home prices rose by 5.75 percent. This was the largest three-month increase of all 20 cities contained in the report.

Inventory Reduction Supports Prices

San Francisco stood out in other ways, as well. The city had the second largest inventory reduction of all 20 metro areas tracked by Altos Research. If this trend continues, it could put continued upward pressure on San Francisco real estate prices. This is good news for homeowners who have lost significant equity since the housing market crashed.

In most real estate markets across the country, excessive inventory is the biggest drag on home prices. Mortgage rates are low, and homes are more affordable than they’ve been in years. But high inventories have been pushing prices south, making potential buyers wary about taking the plunge.

If you take the falling prices out of this equation, you have a perfect scenario for buyers and investors — low mortgage rates, and low (but rising) home prices. This is how things are shaping up in the San Francisco real estate market.

Granted, most housing analysts are predicting a long and flat bottom for housing markets — San Francisco included. But when the patient has been in a coma for years, any sign of life is worth noting.

San Francisco Home Prices in Second Half of 2011

On July 8, 2011, real estate valuation firm Clear Capital released a report showing home-price trends and forecasts for 50 U.S. cities. Their predictions were mostly gloomy for the second half of 2011, with a few exceptions. San Francisco was one of the exceptions. It was one of only five metro areas where home prices were predicted to rise in the second half of 2011 (New York, Dallas, Orlando, and Washington, D.C. were the other four).

Stated differently, San Francisco was in the ten-percent club. The other ninety percent of the metro housing markets tracked by Clear Capital were predicted to see flat or declining home prices for the rest of this year.

The Truckee, California-based company expects San Francisco home prices to rise by 0.2 percent between July and December of this year. It’s a small number by any yardstick. But given the price erosion predicted for the rest of the country, it’s a noteworthy number.

Jump in Home Sales – May to June 2011

We also witnessed an unexpected jump in home sales in San Francisco, from May to June. Bay Area home sales rose by 14.5 percent during that month-over-month period. This marked the highest level of home sales since June 2010 (when the home-buyer tax credits were expiring).

DataQuick president John Walsh pointed to a number of factors that could have caused the spike: “June likely benefited from a combination of factors, such as price reductions, low mortgage rates and perhaps a batch of short sale transactions from spring that took months to close.”

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Filed under Market Reports

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Article source: http://www.homebuyinginstitute.com/news/san-francisco-prices-172/

California’s up-and-down economic recovery took another turn for the worse in May as employers shed a net 29,200 jobs from payrolls, a surprisingly large loss following the healthy gains seen earlier this year.

Some of the losses are probably tied to a slowdown in trade with Japan, which is still recovering from a devastating tsunami, and from rising gas prices and other costs that have led employers to put the brakes on hiring, economists said.

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“I see Japan written all over this report,” said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University.

Cargo passing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach rose just 1% in May, the same month in which employers eliminated 3,600 positions in trade, transportation and utilities.

Construction was another weak spot, shedding 5,000 jobs, as the sour real estate market continued to be a drag on the recovery. Home sales statewide fell 13.3% last month from a year earlier, and home values dropped by 10.4%.

The unemployment rate inched down to 11.7%, according to the state Employment Development Department report released Friday. But analysts saw little to cheer, saying that the decline in the rate probably reflects growing numbers of Californians who have given up the job hunt or who have left to seek work elsewhere. Only Nevada has higher unemployment than California.

The trend mirrors a gloomier outlook nationally, with both employment and economic growth slowing amid higher prices for gasoline and other consumer goods and services.

“This is one more indication of how slow the recovery is proceeding and is likely to proceed,” said Michael Bernick, an attorney who formerly headed the state Employment Development Department. “It also raises a counter-narrative, that there are structural changes and the economy, in certain sectors, needs fewer workers.”

That’s not what Donna Smith, 23, of Salton City wants to hear. She recently completed a certificate program in business management from Everest College, a multi-campus vocational school, but hasn’t had luck finding any work.

“I’m looking for any basic entry-level position, but it’s kind of hard,” she said. “There’s not really much.”

The job losses in May came after the state added an adjusted 14,900 jobs in April, when the unemployment rate was 11.8%, according to the latest EDD figures. The state experienced five straight months of job growth from October through February.

Adibi sounded an optimistic note, saying that the Japanese rebuilding effort will eventually translate into more work in California. He also predicts the state will gain jobs as consumers start spending discretionary income on vacations and on items they’d been holding off on purchasing.

Japan, he added, “is just a hiccup — job creation is going to gain momentum as we go through the year.”

Technology is one bright spot. Tech companies in the Bay Area are on a hiring binge, helping keep the unemployment rate in the San Francisco area to 8.1%.

The San Francisco area added a net 2,600 jobs in May, while the San Jose-Santa Clara statistical area added 2,100. Employment in the information sector has grown 7.1% in just a year.

“It is shocking to me — reading the paper, watching the news, hearing the unemployment reports, hearing house prices continuing to slump — you just don’t see that in the Bay Area,” said Kevin Hartz, chief executive of Eventbrite, an online ticketing company that has hired 32 people so far this quarter. The firm has been forced to recruit engineers from out of state to fill some open positions.

The Bay Area is one of the few regions to consistently gain jobs this year, thanks to the information sector, but most of the state’s unemployed lack the education to work in the newly created jobs.

Prospects aren’t so bright elsewhere. Many of the state’s unemployed workers are trained in industries — such as construction — that have virtually disappeared. Job prospects in retail and trade, meanwhile, have been dimmed by corporate efforts to make do with fewer people, often by having computer programs and machines do jobs that used to require workers.

“Becoming sophisticated, more advanced and computerized may not pay out in additional jobs,” said Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands who studies the logistics industry. “It could even mean negative job growth.”

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-jobs-20110618,0,4509354.story