The Bay Area saw home prices climb across the region in 2012, driven by tech growth and a recovering national economy.

Median prices for single-family detached homes were up in all but eight of 107 communities in the Bay Area for the fourth quarter, according to new numbers from the real estate data firm DataQuick.

Prices in Oakland were up 35 percent, while prices in San Francisco rose 21.2 percent.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2013/01/bay-area-home-prices-up-in-q4-2012.html

Earlier this week, when we got the report of a bump up in sales of newly constructed homes, I cautioned that the home builders are still facing huge competition from distressed properties (foreclosures and short sales). Today we have some new numbers showing just how big and how widespread that competition is. 

Foreclosed properties made up 28 percent of all home sales nationwide in the first quarter of this year, according to RealtyTrac.

That’s up slightly from Q4 of 2010, but not the record 29 percent we saw a year ago. More than 107,000 bank-owned (REO) properties sold, which is actually a drop from the previous quarter and a bigger drop (36 percent) from a year ago. Foreclosed properties sold at a 35 percent discount to their non-distressed counterparts.

So here we have fewer selling but making up a larger share of total sales. That’s not particularly healthy. We need to get more of these properties sold, because as I showed you on the blog Tuesday, there are hundreds of thousands of them and millions more in the potential pipeline.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43182211?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS