A total of 9,339 new and resale houses and condos changed hands in the nine-county Bay Area in July – up 13.3 percent from July 2012, said DataQuick, a San Diego real estate research firm. The median paid was $562,000, a 33.5 percent increase from the same time last year.

Pent-up buyer demand, an improving regional economy and low interest rates have propelled home prices upward for many months. But a dearth of homes for sale meant the number being sold fell on a year-over-year basis every month since January. That trajectory reversed course in July.

“It was a really strong month,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst.

Rising inventory shows the real estate market regaining equilibrium.

“Sellers want to jump on the train by putting their properties on the market, which levels supply and demand,” said Tanja Beck, an agent with Zephyr Real Estate in San Francisco.

Fewer bids

More inventory, as well as rising interest rates, should soon rein in the sharp price increases. Although bidding wars still occur, many agents say multiple offers now are measured in smaller numbers – perhaps three bids instead of a dozen.

While San Francisco is the nation’s most competitive market, with 80.5 percent of successful home buyers facing other bids, multiple offers in the city dropped nearly 10 percent from June to July, according to a report from real estate firm Redfin.

Nationwide, fewer bidding wars “points toward the strong sellers’ market beginning to shift toward more balance, giving frustrated home buyers a bit of relief,” Redfin said.

Distress sales are down sharply, another sign of a return to normal. Foreclosure resales were under 5 percent of the total – their lowest level since August 2007, before the credit crunch hit. In February 2009, foreclosure resales were 52 percent of the market, DataQuick said. Their historic monthly average in the Bay Area is about 10 percent of sales.

Short sales – properties sold for less than is owed on the mortgage – were 10 percent of July resales, down from 23.7 percent a year earlier.

Fewer distress sales also mean that people who sell their homes are likely to turn around and buy another property, creating a positive upward spiral.

“There was a time when more than half the sales were the lender pocketing money (in a foreclosure resale) so they just ended there,” LePage said. “Now a greater and greater percentage are traditional sellers, who will move up and buy from someone who themselves will move up.”

Upward mobility

Jessica and Josh Rowe exemplify that move-up buyer. The couple, along with their toddler and two French bulldogs, wants to move from San Francisco to the South Bay to live closer to their jobs. They listed their condo in Haight-Ashbury, a three-bedroom remodeled Victorian, at $949,000. It’s likely to go for well above asking price.

“To go from being sellers to being buyers, your confidence gets crazy-hacked,” said Jessica Rowe. “As a seller, you’re on top of the world, you make all this money – but as a buyer you can’t afford to get (something comparable) to what you just sold.”

The Haight condo itself illustrates the market turnaround. When the Rowes bought it three years ago – near the market’s bottom – the previous owners were on the brink of foreclosure. After unsuccessfully listing it at $799,000 for a month, they slashed the price to $755,000, which is what the Rowes paid.

The Bay Area’s median price is now 15.5 percent off the $665,000 peak it reached in summer 2007, LePage said. During the downturn, its nadir was $290,000 in March 2009.

The median represents the middle value of homes sold, meaning half sold for more and half for less. DataQuick said about three-quarters of the median’s increase stems from rising home values, the remainder from a shift in market mix.

More high-end homes and fewer inexpensive ones sold in July. Just over half (51 percent) of sales had mortgages above the old jumbo limit of $417,000, compared with 38.6 percent a year earlier and the low point of 17.1 percent in January 2009.

Federal Housing Administration loans, mostly used by first-time buyers, were 10.6 percent of purchase mortgages in July, down from 16 percent a year earlier. First-time home buyers consistently report getting squeezed out by investors and others paying all cash.

All-cash sales continued to be a strong force, accounting for 24 percent of July purchases, DataQuick said. In February, they peaked at 32.3 percent of sales.

Absentee buyers, who are mainly investors, snapped up 20.9 percent of Bay Area homes in July. Their market share also peaked in February, at 28.7 percent.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Bay-Area-home-prices-sales-climb-in-July-4736589.php

Buying ain’t easy. First prices soar, then they slow down, but rising interest rates make up the difference.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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The rapid rise of home prices may be slowing, but too bad interest rates are now creeping up.

In the Bay Area, home prices are still growing, but not as fast, according to Trulia, the San Francisco-based online real estate marketplace.

The firm found that while home prices jumped 17.2 percent in the month of July compared with July 2012, price growth slowed down during the last six months. From January to March, prices rose by 6.5 percent and from April to June, they went up 3 percent.

“The biggest price slowdowns have come to some of the hottest local markets,” said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. “California and Nevada remain the Wild West for asking home prices, with some of the sharpest drops during the bust, strongest rebounds over the past year, and now biggest slowdowns in the past quarter.”

Nationwide, asking home prices dropped slightly— 0.3 percent — in July compared with the previous month. It’s the first time since November 2012 that prices didn’t go up.

They are still up 11 percent for the month of July compared with the same month last year.

One major factor deflating home prices is rising interest rates during the past six months.

In the past couple of years, historically low interest rates boosted sales and skyrocketing price growth, but higher rates are now dampening the mood.

“Asking home prices are now starting to lose steam as mortgage rates rise, inventory expands and investor demand declines,” said Trulia in a recent market report.

A year ago, a buyer could afford to pay a higher asking price because interest rates were low. Now, buyers may end up paying the same per month, but more of their payment will go toward interest versus the principal value on the loan.

So even if prices level off or go down in the months to come, buying a home in the Bay Area will still be just as costly if not more.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/08/bay-area-home-price-growth-leveling-off.html

This home at 6905 Norfolk Road in Berkeley boasts four bedrooms and three bathrooms for $1,095,000 or $322 per square foot. See listing here.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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The median price for a single family home in San Francisco hit $1 million in April — the highest level since 2007.

The new median price is a 32 percent jump from $760,000 last year.

Got a cool $1 million to spend on a home? Click on the slideshow to the right for a virtual tour of $1 million homes in Bay Area cities.

“Shrinking inventory combined with low interest rates and motivated buyers has resulted in historically high sales prices,” said Christine Dwiggins, president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

Inventory levels are significantly low with only 1.1 months of inventory available — that means the amount of time it would take to sell off all the homes on the market if no new supply came on — in April whereas five to seven months of inventory is considered a balanced market.

Single-family homes in San Francisco are selling in an average of 28 days, down about 44 percent from an average of 49 days a year ago.

Meanwhile, the median price for a condo in San Francisco reached $850,000 in April — the highest level in the last two years.

Home prices have ballooned in the past year in San Francisco, but it’s not the only Bay Area city enjoying price gains.

See our slideshow for examples of what $1 million can get you in the Bay Area these days courtesy of ZipRealty.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/05/median-home-price-hits-1-million-in.html

In “Bay Area housing recovery spreads from Silicon Valley to East Bay“, Argus reporter Pete Carey describes these housing micro-climates with fascinating data and dramatic anecdotes, starting with the following stark graphic:

(click to enlarge)

The housing micro-climates of the greater San Francisco Bay Area show a dramatic schism between recovery and despair

Source: Bay Area housing recovery spreads from Silicon Valley to East Bay (linked above)

The green areas are localities where housing prices are at or above their pre-crash peaks. In the most favorable areas with good school districts and plentiful jobs, the housing market is back to the good old bad days. Limited inventories, low interest rates, pent-up demand, and buyers flush with cash are scrambling to outbid each other and driving prices ever higher. In some of these areas, prices are already 15-24% ABOVE their pre-crash peak. Far away from the Bay Area’s job centers, housing inventory is plentiful, rampant sub-prime lending has transformed affordability into foreclosures and short sales, and prices are only just now climbing off their post-crash bottoms. The recoveries here may depend upon how fast residents’ tolerances for horrific commutes rebuild relative to the decline in tolerance for sky-high housing prices closer to jobs and good public schools. In between these extremes is a variety of local conditions generating pockets of housing prosperity and despair.

Further to the east is Stockton, now the country’s largest bankrupt city, gateway and ground zero for the state’s housing bubble and crash that rippled hardest throughout the central valley where houses multiplied much faster than jobs. Not shown on this map are the counties northward from San Francisco — Marin, Napa, Sonoma, and Solano. Contrasts exist here as well from the highly sought estates in Marin county, the plush vineyards of Napa, and bucolic surroundings of Sonoma to Vallejo in Solano County that declared bankruptcy at the height of the financial crisis.

This is quite a panorama that highlights the old real estate maxim of location, location, location. Here are some ZIP code related stats from the Argus article:

“Thirty-four of 185 ZIP codes in five counties have regained or surpassed their bubble-era peak home value or are less than 1 percent from it, according to this newspaper’s analysis of February median values for all homes from online real estate site Zillow.

Another 49 ZIPs are within 15 percent of their previous highs, including 18 in the East Bay. A year ago, only part of leafy Palo Alto had regained the value it lost after Bay Area home values crested in 2006-07…

…Fifteen ZIP codes in Contra Costa County and three in Alameda County are more than 50 percent below their peak median home value, according to Zillow’s data. In one Antioch ZIP, the median value of a home was $177,700, only 18 percent up from an October 2009 bottom of $149,800 and 62 percent below its peak of $473,400 in January 2006.”

An extreme example of the recovery comes from Burlingame, a city with some of the most expensive ZIP codes in the Bay Area.

“Up the Peninsula in a Burlingame ZIP code that surpassed its bubble-era peak in August, Dianna Herrmann decided it was time to downsize and put her historic, 6,000-square-foot home on the market for $3.98 million… Fifteen days later, the house was sold in an all-cash deal for over the asking price.”

The anecdotes I hear from friends and family confirm the heat in the Bay Area housing market. One friend offered $50K above asking price for a Sunnyvale home, only to find out that a buyer with all-cash outbid him by another $50K. He has since given up house hunting after seeing a Sunnyvale home in less-than-desirable surroundings sell for a cool million. Another friend has also slowed down her house hunt after realizing that her desired home close to work in Silicon Valley could not be found for less than $1.1M. Some homes in desirable markets are sold within a week of listing, creating an added sense of urgency with buyers:

“The market is so hot that sales in a week are not unusual. According to the real estate company Redfin, 24 percent of Alameda County listings in March were pending in a week; the numbers were 32 percent in Contra Costa County, 19 percent in San Mateo County and 26 percent in Santa Clara County.”

A classic quote I found in a flyer for a home in Fremont — an important traffic hub/gateway between the East Bay and Silicon Valley — offered a modest 3-bedroom house for about $600K that needed updates. It was marketed as an opportunity to turn this residence into “the home of your dreams!”

So why spend time studying and tracking this madness?

First and foremost, this drama provides the backdrop for the great results homebuilders are reporting in their California-based communities. Homebuilders like Tri Pointe Homes (TPH), KB Home (KBH), and Meritage (MTH) are benefiting from the premium markets in the Bay Area (for more on TPH see “A Concentrated Way To Play Rapid Price Appreciation In The California Housing Market“). Similar stories can be found in Southern California. The homebuilders learned many important lessons from the housing crash. One lesson has trained them to focus their building in areas with strong job growth and growing economies. Places like the Bay Area are providing blueprints for the country’s recovery, and we can find homebuilders converging on these locales.

Secondly and in related fashion, the frenzy going on in the housing market is likely a leading (or confirming) indicator of an improving economy, albeit an unevenly recovering one (after all, California has a poverty rate of 16% using traditional measures. When using the Census Bureau’s new supplemental approach that adjusts for the cost of living, California’s poverty rate goes to tops in the nation at 23%). The notion that deflation is a risk in this economy should be quickly dispelled after understanding what is going on in markets like California. The buying will slowly but surely spread out as it always does to the lower-priced regions of the Bay Area as the economy continues to grow. This will have plenty of cascading and multiplying impacts.

Finally, the California housing micro-climates are a great reminder of why both housing bulls and bears can make convincing arguments. Depending on the lens applied, debaters can conjure up plenty of skewed arguments about the health or weakness of the housing market. The biggest mistake I continue to see is the interpretation of low sales numbers (better yet, lower than expectations) as an indicator of a slowing housing market. When inventories are tight and sellers are anxiously waiting for today’s soaring prices to make them whole on their homes, it is no surprise that sales are constrained. Bulls can also overstate the case if they do not recognize that tight credit conditions continue to lock out many entry-level and first-time buyers. The housing market cannot continue its recovery if the buying remains dominated by well-heeled cash buyers. I am still looking for hard data on how many of these cash buyers are Canadians taking advantage of the enviable combination of a strong currency and relatively low prices for American housing; and/or wealthy Chinese nationals looking for lucrative foreign investments.

Overall, the housing market recovery is still just getting started. Markets like the San Francisco Bay Area are leading the way. Pent-up demand is getting released and running into low inventory levels. Homebuilders are scrambling to ramp up to meet some of this demand by buying land and securing scarce construction resources. The cost and price pressures are part of the early growing pains from a decimated industry where supply is not yet recovered enough to handle demand where it is most robust. It is hard to determine when prosperity will be more widely shared, but I am expecting that once unemployment begins a new trajectory downward, scenes like the ones in the Bay Area will spread like wildfire across the country… especially since interest rates are likely to remain extremely low as employment data only slowly improve.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More…)

Article source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1380051-the-san-francisco-bay-area-s-housing-micro-climates-a-microcosm-of-a-2-speed-recovery?source=google_news

(Read More: Housing’s Big Challenge: Student Debt)

Back in the mid-eighties and nineties, Americans spent nearly 20 percent of their median monthly incomes on their home loans—compared to just 12.5 percent today, according to Zillow.

The trouble is that wages have either stagnated or dropped at the same time that home values are rising. Pre-bubble, U.S. homebuyers spent 2.6 times their median annual incomes on the purchase price of a typical home, but now they are spending three times their incomes—meaning homes are 14.5 percent more expensive relative to income, according to Zillow. That is all made possible by government-subsidized, record low rates.

(Read More: Betting on the Home Builders as Housing Battles Back)

“The days of historically high levels of housing affordability are numbered,” said Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries. “Current affordability is almost entirely dependent on low interest rates, and there’s no doubt that rates will begin to rise in the next few years.”

Rates will rise because the Federal Reserve will inevitably have to get out of the business of buying agency mortgage-backed securities, which currently drives down rates. This won’t happen immediately, but it will in the next two to three years.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100631625

Overall, U.S. home prices registered their biggest annual climb since summer 2006, rising 8.1 percent compared with last year, according to the SP/Case-Shiller composite index. Every one of the 20 major metropolitan areas Case-Shiller tracks posted year-over-year gains. The annual gains accelerated in 19 of the markets, with Detroit the only exception.

“The number that jumps off the page is San Francisco’s 17.5 percent increase in the past 12 months,” David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee for SP Dow Jones Indices, said. “That’s pretty big. Only one city, Phoenix (with a 23.2 percent increase), did better. Compared to the low points, you’re way up there, about 25 percent over the low. It’s a strong comeback.”

Resale homes

Case-Shiller defines the San Francisco metro area as Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. The index tracks sales of the same single-family houses over time, comparing changes with a base value of 100, which represents values as of January 2000.

The San Francisco index is now 147.45, meaning that prices are 47.45 percent above their January 2000 level. The region’s index peaked at 218.37 in May 2006 and hit a low of 117.74 in March 2009 – so prices are still 32.5 percent below their peak, according to the index.

Several forces propel the upward trend, notably an improving economy, low interest rates, tight inventory and fewer foreclosures.

The San Francisco area “is the second-leading place in the country in job creation (after Houston), and doesn’t build a lot of houses, so supply is very tight,” said Ken Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley. “We added 210,000 jobs to the Bay Area in the past 2 1/2 years – that’s a lot of people.”

Similar forces are driving the rental market, which is also experiencing big price run-ups. Exacerbating that situation, the tight for-sale inventory “is forcing a lot of people who want to be buyers to remain as renters,” Rosen said.

Rosen and others said Case-Shiller actually understates the turnaround – prices have risen even more than the index can capture. In part, that’s because it has a long lag time, measuring prices in January. Real estate service DataQuick, for instance, reported that February median sales prices in the nine-county Bay Area were up 24.6 percent compared with the same time in 2012.

“I would say Case-Shiller under-represents,” said Charmaine Frank, Redfin real estate’s area manager for San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Marin counties. “The market has taken a pretty dramatic turn since January.”

Cash is the fuel

Like agents throughout the Bay Area, she said there are “enormous bidding wars going on. We see upwards of 40 to 60 offers on some properties; typically the top five to eight will be all-cash buyers.”

The numerous cash sales help fuel price appreciation, she said, because buyers skip getting an appraisal since they don’t have a mortgage. Appraisals, which rely on recent comparable sales, would moderate the rapid run-up.

“There’s a huge shortage of homes on the market right now,” said Cindi Hagley, a broker with the Hagley Group at Prudential California Realty in San Ramon. “For example, there are only 12 single-family homes for sale in Dublin right now. Ordinarily there should be 100 to 150 homes for sale there.”

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist with market analyst Global Insight, said that the rising home prices should help boost the economy further. “They stimulate new construction, and they also help consumer spending because they raise the value of people’s homes,” he said.

With multiple bids and properties selling well above asking price, could another real estate bubble be forming?

“Not yet,” said Rosen. “If they keep (interest) rates this low for two more years, the answer is yes.”

“This time, rapidly rising prices are a good thing,” Newport said. “A lot of homeowners are underwater; this helps them come out of that.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Home-prices-in-Bay-Area-up-17-5-in-January-4386974.php

A: This is a concern that often leads sellers to sit on the sidelines rather than call their Realtor and put that “For Sale” sign in front of their house.

There is a logjam of sorts in our market right now. The number of homes for sale remains far less than needed to adequately meet current buyer demand. Until sellers gather the courage they need to move forward this is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future.

NOW is a great time to sell, because:

1. It has become evident in the past 10 years or so that the real estate market is as volatile as the stock market. Its temperature is related to a number of factors (health of the stock market, employment figures, etc.). As it becomes more challenging to predict future market strength, making decisions about when to sell (or to buy) becomes more about what the real estate market is doing now.

4. If by chance you do not find your new home before you must move, there are good interim housing options, including short-term rentals, available. It is certainly true in my experience, that when a seller takes a leap of faith, with focus and intention, putting their homes on the market, even though they are uncertain about where they will land, the next “right” home for them appears just at the right time.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Sound-Off-What-to-consider-in-a-seller-s-market-4321772.php

Supplies are down across the nation, not just in the former crash markets, like Phoenix and Las Vegas, where investors decimated inventories of distressed homes in bulk purchases. Listings are down 31 percent in Seattle from a year ago, down 32 percent in Denver, down 20 percent in Houston, down 37 percent in Boston, according to local Realtor associations.

(Click Here: Recover Watch Map, Complete Coverage)

“At the moment it’s a seller’s market again,” said David Fogg, a real estate agent in Burbank, CA. “Very low inventory, very low interest rates, almost no bank inventory of homes, it’s crazy out there. Every good property I’ve listed this year has brought 10-50 offers and sales prices 10-20 percent over comps. Cash is King.”

Nearly one third of all existing home sales in January were paid for in cash, and not just by investors, who are making up a shrinking share of the market. Fierce competition is forcing buyers to use every advantage, given that so many are going after so little.

In California’s San Fernando Valley there are usually over 9,000 homes for sale this time of year, according to real estate agent Billy Wynn. Today there are just over 1,400.

“Realtors are getting so many offers they are taking the homes off the market and not accepting additional offers before any offer is even accepted,” said Wynn. “This is real estate bubble 2.0 on steroids.”

It is a puzzling situation, given all the warnings of a tsunami of so-called “shadow inventory” that was supposed to be flooding the market right now. As it stands, fewer distressed properties are coming to the market.

“The ticking time bomb of shadow supply has been diffused by a combination of foreclosure processing delays in judicial states, legislation slowing down the foreclosure process in non-judicial states, foreclosure prevention programs and initiatives encouraging short sales,” said Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac. “Notably, in 2012, was the National Mortgage Settlement, which both encouraged foreclosure prevention and short sales as an alternative to foreclosure, and the loosening of short sale guidelines by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in November.”

As a result, short sales, where the home is sold for less than the value of the mortgage, are rising as a share of total distressed sales, while bank-owned home sales are falling. Investors are now competing for such little supply that they are ironically pricing themselves out of the market.

(Read More: Distressed Homes Still Drive Sales)

“We are hearing also, that new home buyers are not really looking at the foreclosure market—the houses are either not in good neighborhoods or the house is in bad condition and needs a lot of updates,” noted Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR. “So home buyers are either going to new-builds or being very picky with the type and shape of the house. We are hearing from plenty of mortgage brokers that they are working with many couples, and they just can’t find the perfect house.”

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100512238

Instead, she opted for a condo. Like many buyers this year, she was outbid several times before finally settling on a new unit at Oakland’s Uptown Place near the 19th Street BART Station.

“The rental market has changed so much that it’s cheaper to own (in Oakland) than rent even a studio in San Francisco,” she said. “A condo was the right fit for me. I couldn’t afford a single-family home unless I lived way far away.”

Many other Bay Area home buyers, especially first-time buyers, investors and empty nesters, are making similar calculations. As the real estate market heated up in 2012, condo sales surged, particularly at existing complexes. (Supply of new units remains low as home building has been stalled for the past several years.)

Most since 2006

A total of 15,853 resale condos changed hands in the Bay Area in the first 10 months of 2012 , the highest level for that time period since the bubble days of 2006, when 16,720 sold, according to San Diego DataQuick, a real estate information service.

“It’s a traditional first foothold in the housing market for a lot of people,” said Andrew Le-Page, a DataQuick analyst. “In a year where mortgage rates were unbelievably low and prices started to ratchet higher in many Bay Area communities, condos looked better to a lot of people. Both first-time buyers and investors were getting pushed out of single-family markets because of price or lack of inventory.”

It’s a big turnaround from the downturn days.

“Two or three years ago you couldn’t give condos away,” said Davey Cetina, an agent with Better Homes Gardens Real Estate in Berkeley who specializes in condos. In 2008, for instance, fewer than 10,000 condos changed hands in the first 10 months of the year.

One big reason sales fell was because tight financing guidelines often meant that condo purchases had to be all cash. Too many delinquencies on homeowner dues and too many condos that weren’t occupied by owners scotched the ability to get a mortgage at many complexes.

Additional problems

Condos can come with other problems, too. Older complexes may have deferred maintenance projects that can result in higher homeowner assessments down the road. Homeowner association dues, usually a few hundred dollars a month, add to the costs. But still, their affordability outshines that of single-family homes.

“The purchase prices are significantly less than single-family homes because there is no land involved, so we are still able to find condos under $500,000, even under $300,000,” said Zanna Knight, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Berkeley. “For first-time buyers, a condo is a nice transition to homeownership. They don’t have to worry so much about upkeep and can graduate into a single-family house when their circumstances permit.”

“It tends to be a fall-back category for people who either can’t afford a single-family home in a decent neighborhood or have gotten beaten up with rejected offers too many times,” said Jeff Weissman, an agent with Highland Partners/BHG. “I also see condo buyers who are coming back into the real estate market after family issues or having lost a house to foreclosure, as well as a few empty nesters.”

Condo prices are still far off their peaks. The median price in the Bay Area is $295,000, or $256 per square foot. That’s only a tad higher than the trough reached in 2011 of $257,000, or $229 per square foot. At the peak in 2007, the median was $505,000, or $432 a square foot.

“Condos are the last to go up in price (in a rising market) and the first to drop off when things change,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.

Attractive investment

Investors are an increasingly potent force in the Bay Area condo market, with absentee buyers accounting for about a third of resale condo purchases in 2012, DataQuick said. That’s almost double their share in 2008, when they were 18.5 percent of the market. But in the cheapest county, Solano, where the 2012 median condo price was just $82,000, investors account for 62 percent of sales, DataQuick said.

“Condos are an appealing investment because rents relative to prices are pretty good and they are a manageable size,” said Andrew Jeffery, principal of Cirrios Real Estate, an investment firm in San Francisco. As a sideline to his company’s business of buying apartment buildings with outside money, he and four partners are investing in a few Oakland condos.

“To buy a $60,000 or $80,000 condo is a bite-sized chunk for us,” he said. “If we see one we like, we all pony up small amounts of cash.”

In late 2011, the group bought two one-bedroom condos in the Adams Point neighborhood near Oakland’s Lake Merritt, a neighborhood that they deemed “up and coming ” – one for $60,000 plus $25,000 in renovation costs, the other for $50,000. Both bring in enough rent to cover 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, homeowner dues and other expenses. The partners just made an offer on a third one for $92,000.

“None of us are going to retire off of them, but they’ll fund my golf habit or whatever I want to do with the (rental income) in 15 years when they’re paid off,” Jeffery said.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Condo-sales-picking-up-in-Bay-Area-4207185.php

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“We did have a brief window of opportunity—or now it seems brief, it actually lasted quite awhile—during the housing downturn where we had, for the first time in years something approaching reasonable affordability in the Bay Area,” said Carolyn Said, economics and real estate reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, on KQED Public Radio’s Forum show. “First-time home buyers could find a home in the $300,000 price range. [That home wasn't] necessarily in San Francisco, but in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and without even going way out to the outer edges of the counties.”

And homes prices in San Francisco dipped as well.

Affordability was “the highest we have seen in 25 years in 2010, early 2011,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker for the San Francisco Bay Area.

This Golden Age of Affordability may have come to an end, at least for now. But here’s the good news: If you didn’t buy a home in the past few years, you only sort of missed the boat.

Low Interest Rates

An advantageous part of the affordability equation is still applicable in the form of historically low interest rates, according to Said. “[Rates] are still right around 3.5 percent, which is just amazing when you think of it,” she said.

“That’s a positive for people looking to buy a house. Their buying power is really more because their effective monthly payment is still going to be less, even if they’re paying a little more [for the property].”

In addition to low interest rates, there’s some other good news for would-be home buyers. The Federal Housing Administration still offers loans requiring relatively small down payments.

FHA Loans

“In order to have home ownership, you need to have a down payment, which people starting out in their careers often don’t have,” said Said. She said FHA loan are available with a “3.5 percent down payment if you have decent enough credit, and of course it helps to have a stable income.” A down payment of less than 20 percent requires the purchase of mortgage insurance, but even with that added cost, the low percentage required up front should make the initial plunge more affordable.

Micro-Markets

It’s also important to remember that the Bay Area is a diverse region, and with that diversity comes price range.

“We tend to roll things up as the ‘Bay Area’ in general, but we’re probably 30 micro-markets,” said Turley.

You may have missed your window of opportunity to own a house in San Francisco and Palo Alto proper, but there are still relatively affordable places in the Bay Area.

“More affordable neighborhoods are in Oakland, eastern Contra Costa County, and other parts of the East Bay, as well as in some San Jose neighborhoods,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia, an online real estate company.

These places might not have the cachet of the Marina district, but they still offer many of the benefits of living in the Bay Area: good weather,  a decent job market and proximity to outdoor recreation.

And even if you have to pay a bit more to enter the market, chances are you still will get a decent return on your investment.

Still Time to Make a Good Investment

“Historically, since World War II, housing has appreciated … maybe half a percent or a percent ahead of inflation,” said Said. “And that is normal for our country. If you look at [the value of your house] going up 3.5 percent a year over the next 20 years that’s still a substantial appreciation.”

True, that’s not a doubling in value that earlier California generations enjoyed. But Said said that “given what’s been happening in Silicon Valley, with the tremendous demand for housing and the tremendous amount of money that is out there for people working at high-tech companies, the housing in Silicon Valley is not following normal economic paths. It is fueled by all this tech money and from that perspective, it’s perfectly possible that your house will run way up there.”

Finding a Place in the Bay Area Was Never Easy

If you should find yourself put on the spot about why you didn’t jump while prices were lower, you can always blame a lack of credit.

“One of the reasons why people haven’t been able to take advantage of the relatively lower prices and low mortgage rates during the past couple of years is that mortgage credit has been very tight,” said Kolko. “Banks have been reluctant to lend to people who don’t have high credit scores.” The new mortgage rules announced Thursday might encourage banks to be more willing to lend to borrowers who meet income and credit guidelines, he said, so that credit could become easier for some people to obtain.

And remember, San Francisco is a world-class city. Affordability here is a relative term.

“It’s as if God wanted the Bay Area to be expensive,” said Kolko. Not only does the region’s relatively mild weather attract people, but because the region is “hemmed in by the ocean on one side, the bay and the mountains on the other, there’s very little available land to build. The Bay Area’s not like places in Texas or other parts of the South where you can spread out in all directions.”

And there are other limits on building…

“Regulations on building are particularly strict in the Bay Area,” said Kolko. “That makes it even more difficult to build new housing, both in the Bay Area and in much of California, and that adds to the high cost.”

So if you didn’t get around to buying a house when prices were low — take solace in the fact that prices weren’t ever that low.

Article source: http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/01/10/if-youre-in-the-market-for-a-home-in-the-bay-area-yes-you-missed-the-boat-sort-of/