The median price of $540,000 paid across the nine-county region was up 31.7 percent from a year earlier, said DataQuick of San Diego. Meanwhile, the 8,616 new and resale homes and condos that changed hands in August were 0.6 percent shy of the number sold in August 2012.

“No matter which price gauge or index you look at, prices are up a lot – much more than people had expected,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst. “The median has been up around 30 percent (compared with the previous year) for the past five months, but I don’t expect that this rate of increase will continue much longer.”

Several trends should soon slow the growth, including rising mortgage interest rates, more homes for sale, fewer cash-paying investors, and dwindling of bargain distress sales.

More homes to see

Real estate agents said that rising inventory is quite apparent.

“I’m definitely starting to see more houses for sale,” said Corey Weinstein, an agent with Red Oak Realty in the East Bay. “The brokers’ tour list for this week was bigger. The Sunday open house guide was a lot longer. There’s an optimism among buyers that there is a lot more out there to see.”

One result is that bidding wars, while still a factor, now involve just a handful of potential buyers, rather than a dozen.

Increasingly more homeowners are finding out that the math works out for them to sell now.

Graham Humphreys and Anissa Burnley are listing their three-plus bedroom Cape Cod-style home near Oakland’s Glen Echo Creek, close to lower Piedmont Avenue and Adams Point.

“We bought the house in 2005 at the peak of the market,” Humphreys said. “It’s a beautiful house that we absolutely loved, but in the interim, like a lot of people, we had our time of being underwater, our time when we might have wanted to move but couldn’t sell.”

Better for buyers

Now as they seek more space for a growing family, they’re able to put it on the market, asking $679,000, a bit more than the $644,000 they paid.

“In the space of a couple of years, it’s gone from a relatively dire situation for many of us to an opportunity for both the sellers and buyers,” Humphreys said. “Everything has changed.”

For home buyers who’ve faced frustrating bidding wars and dearth of inventory, the increase in for-sale listings is welcome news.

“Home shopping should be much more enjoyable this fall than it was earlier in the year,” LePage said. “People will still bemoan the increase in prices, but there will be more homes to choose from. The typical home buyer won’t feel as rushed.”

Around the Bay Area some of the biggest price increases were in lower-cost counties. Solano County saw the median jump 46.1 percent, albeit starting from a low base. It is now $277.500. Contra Costa’s median was up 40.9 percent to $420,250.

The rising prices helped fuel another trend: Condo sales hit an eight-year high for the month of August with 1,960 changing hands at a median price of $445,000.

Lower-priced condos are typically a way that first-time buyers get a foothold in the market when they’re priced out of single-family homes in their desired area.

As is normal in the late summer, both price and sales dipped in August compared with the previous month. The median was 3.9 percent short of July’s $562,000 median, and sales were down 7.7 percent from July.

Home values increase

About three-quarters of the median’s rise stemmed from an actual increase in home values, with the remainder being due to a changing market mix.

Distress sales were less than half the level of a year ago. Foreclosure resales accounted for 4.6 percent of August resales (the same as in July) versus 14.5 percent a year earlier. That 4.6 percent is the lowest share since August 2007, just before the credit crunch hit.

Short sales, or homes sold for less than is owed on the mortgage, were 10 percent of resales, down from 23.3 percent in August 2012.

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-home-sales-subside-but-prices-increase-4813295.php

In the nine-county region, 8,579 homes were sold, up 14.2 percent from August 2011, according to DataQuick, a real estate service in San Diego. The median price paid was $410,000, up 10.8 percent from last year. It was the fifth consecutive month in which the median rose significantly compared with a year earlier.

It was the best August sales volume in six years, since before the real estate bubble burst and the credit market collapsed, according to DataQuick.

“The market is gradually moving toward normalcy,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst. “It’s a slow, modest recovery that depends heavily on the health of the economy and how lenders manage the remaining distress.”

Tight inventory continues to push up prices, as buyers hoping to lock in record-low interest rates vie for a limited supply of homes for sale.

Akil Murali, 27, a Symantec product manager who has been house-hunting in San Francisco and the Peninsula, exemplifies the challenges faced by many buyers.

“I made quite a number of offers where there was a lot of competition and the properties went well above asking,” he said. “I lost out and never even got an opportunity to make a counteroffer. Recently I made an offer $60,000 above asking, but (lost out to) all-cash buyers who removed all financial contingencies, making them more attractive to the seller.”

‘Things are crazy’

Murali finally has a contract on a two-bedroom home in Foster City, where a previous offer fell through when the buyer didn’t qualify for a mortgage.

“Things are crazy,” said his real estate agent, Regina Puzon, Peninsula team lead agent for Redfin. “Some homes are getting 20 or 30 offers. I have a lot of clients upping their down payments and removing all contingencies to get their offers accepted.”

She and other agents said that many sellers are underpricing their homes to spur bidding wars – a tactic that was prevalent in real estate’s boom days. By contrast, “during the downturn, people were pricing houses for what they thought they would go for,” said Sandy Patel-Hilfery of Pacific Union International in Montclair.

There are also signs that inventory may be increasing, she said. “This week alone there were 50 new, good listings in Berkeley, Piedmont and the nicer parts of Oakland,” she said. “Ordinarily, I would have expected 30 new listings of nicer houses at this time of year. The agents are jazzed because everyone has buyers who are chomping at the bit.”

Homeowners who were sidelined by the downturn may be starting to list their homes for sale as the market recovers. “Sellers are finally catching on to the fact that there are buyers coming out in droves,” Patel-Hilfery said.

Regaining equity

As values slowly rise, some homeowners who were underwater are regaining equity, another reason they may now be willing to sell. Nationwide, 1.3 million homeowners who had been underwater returned to positive equity this year, research firm CoreLogic said this week. In the Bay Area, about 27,000 homeowners returned to positive equity.

The 10.8 percent rise in the Bay Area’s median price in August is in part a reflection of a different mix of homes on the market – more higher-priced homes and fewer bargain-basement foreclosures, LePage said. Sales of homes over $500,000 were up 23 percent versus last year while sales of those under $300,000 were down 6 percent from a year ago.

Bank-owned foreclosures accounted for 14.9 percent of resales in August – down from 25.7 percent a year ago and approaching the historic monthly average of 10 percent. Foreclosure sales peaked at 52 percent of resales in February 2009. Short sales – homes sold for less than the balance due on the mortgage – accounted for 18.9 percent of resales, slightly up from 18.1 percent a year ago.

Fragile equilibrium

The market’s fragile equilibrium could be upset by such factors as a deluge of bank-owned foreclosures or a downturn in the economy, LePage said. But foreclosure activity is clearly slowing, although millions of homeowners nationwide continue to struggle.

Last year, lenders repossessed California homes at an average of almost 14,000 a month, said Sean O’Toole, founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com. Through August of this year, the statewide pace plummeted by one-third, to an average of just under 9,000 foreclosures a month. Mortgage delinquencies also are falling compared with a year ago, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which implies that foreclosures will continue to decline.

And mortgage interest rates, already hovering near historic lows of 3.55 percent on a 30-year fixed-rate loan, are likely to remain super-affordable, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s plan to buy billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities announced Thursday.

Bouncing back in a big way

8,579

Bay Area homes sold in August

14.2%

Change from August 2011

$410,000

Median price in August

10.8%

Change from August 2011

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-home-sales-prices-up-in-August-3867301.php

The median price for all new and resale homes throughout the nine counties in June was $417,000, up 10.4 percent from a year earlier, according to DataQuick, a San Diego real estate service. That was the highest since August 2008 and a big jump from the trough of $290,000 in March 2009, but still far short of the peak of $665,000 in the summer of 2007.

“This reflects a market that’s slowly moving back toward normalcy,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst. “The bulk of the regional and countywide gains in median is the result of fewer foreclosures and other lower-cost homes selling and more mid- to high-priced homes.”

Decline in values

About half of the median’s drop over the real estate downturn came from a different composition of homes sold (more low-end homes results in a lower median), while the other half came from a decline in home values, DataQuick said.

Distressed sales – foreclosures and short sales in which homes are sold for less than what is owed on the mortgage – continued to decline. Distressed sales were 36.1 percent of the resale market, compared with 44.3 percent a year earlier.

The distressed sales were almost evenly split between foreclosure resales (18.1 percent) and short sales (18 percent). At their peak in February 2009, foreclosures accounted for 52 percent of resales, DataQuick said.

The 8,577 homes that sold in the month was up 7.2 percent from a year earlier, DataQuick said.

Real estate agents continue to report that inventories are low in the Bay Area, which increases buyer competition and drives up prices. Properties are selling much more quickly than in the past.

“We usually have a two-month agreement with clients, which gives them a nice marketing period to have our items in a home,” said Jeff Schlarb, owner of Green Couch Interior Design and Staging, which decks out for-sale homes to show them to their best advantage. “But now we’re seeing places sold in three weeks. It’s a big change from a year ago.”

Absentee buyers

Investors continue to be a potent market force. Absentee buyers bought 23.4 percent of Bay Area homes in June, up from 20 percent a year ago, paying a median of $270,000. Buyers paying all cash represented 27.5 percent of sales, up slightly from a year ago.

As always, market health varies tremendously by area.

“In part of the Silicon Valley, at least some of the increase in median reflects price pressure,” LePage said. “You’ve got a thin inventory of homes for sale and a fair number of people chasing them.

“Across the market, more and more neighborhoods are at least stable and some are inching up, while some remain weak. In some neighborhoods, if you get two more foreclosures on your street and they’re both dilapidated and the seller is anxious – those are scenarios where prices are still pretty soft.”

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Home-sales-prices-up-in-Bay-Area-in-June-3717559.php

There were also signs the market continues its long trek back to normalcy: The portion of homes bought with adjustable-rate and “jumbo” loans rose, while the share of sales involving foreclosures, investors and cash buyers fell, a real estate information service reported.

A total of 6,789 new and resale houses and condos sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was down 3.7% from 7,051 in March and down 3.1% from 7,003 in April 2010, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.

On average, Bay Area home sales have risen 4.4% between March and April since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics begin.

Last month’s sales were the lowest for an April since 2008, when 6,310 sold, and were the third-lowest on record. April sales have ranged from a low of 5,636 in 1995 to a high of 14,430 in 2004, while the average is 9,147. Last month’s sales tally was 25.8% below that average.

“April activity looks weak on the heels of March, which eked out the highest sales for that month in four years. But it’s also to be expected that sales and other statistics will behave more erratically these days. Part of the reason is that short sales are at relatively high levels, and they can take much longer to close escrow. Lenders can vary the pace at which they sell off distressed homes. What’s clear now is that 2011 is off to a slow start, but it’s a little soon to write off the rest of the year,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.

“Higher job growth or lower home prices, coupled with low mortgage rates and rising consumer confidence, could still push sales well above today’s subpar level. Of course, everything will be tempered this year by the people who won’t buy until they’re convinced prices have hit rock bottom, and by those who can’t buy because they owe more on their existing homes than they’re worth.”

Article source: http://www.thestreet.com/story/11120821/1/san-francisco-home-sales-at-3-year-low.html