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Home values drop in SF, other big metro areas

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:41:28 +0000

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Real estate values in much of the Bay Area are continuing to fall, according to a report released Tuesday.

Home values in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and San Mateo counties — dropped 1.9 percent in January from the month before and were down 1.7 percent year over year, according to the latest Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price report.

San Francisco was one of 18 of 20 metro areas with year-over-year declines. The only areas with gains were San Diego, at 0.1 percent, and Washington, at 3.6 percent. Eight metro areas — Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Tampa, Fla. — had year-over-year drops of 6.7 percent or more.

“Keeping with the trends set in late 2010, January brings us weakening home prices with no real hope in sight for the near future,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of SP’s index committee, said in the report.

Pointing to a potential “double dip” for the nation’s real estate market, 11 cities — Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Tampa, Fla. — reached new lows from the market’s peak in 2006 and 2007.

“The housing market recession is not yet over, and none of the statistics are indicating any form of sustained recovery,” Blitzer noted. “At most, we have seen all statistics bounce along their troughs; at

worst, the feared double-dip recession may be materializing.”

Although San Jose is Northern California’s largest city, it’s not included in the Case-Shiller report because its metro area is not one of the nation’s 20 largest.

Earlier this month, however, DataQuick Information Systems reported that the median sale price for existing single-family homes in Santa Clara County was $495,000 in February, down 3 percent year over year.

The Case-Shiller indexes are designed to track the values of typical single-family homes in a region.

Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_17726918

Investors Lead San Francisco Home Sales

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:18:47 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (DQNews) — Bay Area home sales held at a poky pace in February as the median sale price fell below the year-ago level for the fifth consecutive month. With many would-be buyers still reluctant to enter the market, the share of homes sold to investors and others paying cash rose to unusually high levels, a real estate information service reported.

A total of 4,991 new and resale houses and condos sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was up 0.5% from 4,966 in January but down 0.9% from 5,035 in February 2010, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The San Diego firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.

A small increase in sales between January and February is normal for the season, with that gain averaging 2.7% since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics begin. Last month’s sales were 20.9% below the February average of 6,307 transactions.

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Just 243 newly built homes sold in the Bay Area in February, the least for any month in DataQuick’s statistics. The previous low was 253 in January this year. One of the main problems builders face is that they can’t compete with prices on resale homes, especially distressed properties.

Distressed sales – the combination of sales of foreclosed homes and “short sales” – accounted for just over half of the Bay Area’s resale market last month.

Foreclosure resales – homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – made up 32.6% of the Bay Area’s resale market in February. That was down from 35.0% in January and 36.3% a year ago. Foreclosure resales peaked at 52.0% in February 2009. The monthly average for foreclosure resales over the past 15 years is about 9%.

Short sales – transactions where the sale price fell short of what was owed on the property – made up an estimated 20.3% of Bay Area resales last month, a peak for the current real estate cycle. Last month’s short sale figure was up from an estimated 19.7% in January, 17.8% a year earlier, and 12.6% two years ago.

Article source: http://www.thestreet.com/story/11050412/1/investors-lead-san-francisco-home-sales.html