Inventories are tightest on the low end of the market, where investors came in and bought most of the distressed properties and are now holding them as single-family rentals. There is about a four-month supply of homes priced under $100,000, while there is around a twelve-month supply of homes priced over $500,000. That’s why sales of those low-end homes are down 16 percent from a year ago, and sales of higher-end homes are up 25 percent, according to the Realtors.

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

“The housing shortage is going to continue,” claimed Yun, who says the builders need to ramp up housing starts by 50 percent. He admits that is unlikely to happen due to land, labor and supply constraints.

Weak supplies are pushing home prices up far faster than wage growth, which is keeping first-time buyers especially on the sidelines. These buyers made up just 30 percent of the market in March, compared to the historical norm of 40-45 percent. They just can’t compete with all cash investors.

(Read More: Why Housing Affordability Is at Risk)

But if prices get too high, investors could leave the market. Their share was already down in March to 19 percent compared to 22 percent just one month ago. The danger is that they will start to unload the homes they own, which would bring much-needed supply back but which could also turn home prices in the other direction.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100660999

(Read More: Home Buyers Are Back, but Where Are the Houses?)

“What’s holding people back from buying a property is a fear of selling their property and not being able to find one. That’s what the problem is,” noted Herrera.

The Las Vegas market is being fueled by investors, but even the investors can’t find the great bargains anymore. While the economy has improved some, the drop in foreclosures is really due to a new law that went into effect in Nevada last year; it criminalizes faulty foreclosures. Banks have therefore tried to do more short sales and loan modifications. Foreclosures in Nevada dropped 36 percent in 2012 from the previous year, according to RealtyTrac, but the distress is still there.

“People in Las Vegas talk about shadow inventory to the point where nobody really wants to talk about it anymore, said Mike Brunson, a local appraiser. “People will argue and say it isn’t, but I can name a dozen people off the top of my head who have been in their houses for over three years without a payment.”

Brunson called Las Vegas the Titanic of the real estate market. It was once thought unsinkable, and even now that the worst is over, he still thinks the market is on a well-provisioned life raft, not on solid ground.

“The only thing that concerns me is that we have been here before and the market itself is not what is driving the price increases. It’s not that we have new employers coming in and creating tens of thousands of new jobs that are leading to people buying new houses. It’s ‘Las Vegas is on sale,’ and investors are buying up everything they can in the used market.

Whatever the cause, the result is new construction and new life breathed into the nation’s home builders.

“There’s been a lot of talk about shadow inventory. It’s gone on for years, and the reality is there’s not enough inventory out there to meet demand today. Demand has increased, certainly our buyers see that, and we’re getting a lot of buyers because of that,” argued Andrews, whose company is, he said, building 150 percent more homes than a year ago.

(Read More: Home Buyers Are Back, but Where Are the Houses?)

Brunson acknowledged there is no question the demand is real. The sales are real. But he still worries about the fundamentals, such as the slow economic growth and the fact that so much of the funding for new home sales is coming from low down payment, government-backed mortgages.

“We have been here before,” said Brunson.

What remains to be seen is if history will repeat itself or if this recovery is as unique as the collapse that preceded it.

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick; Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick or on Facebook at facebook.com/DianaOlickCNBC

Questions? Comments? RealtyCheck@cnbc.com

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100522314

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

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Business Insider has recently shed light on the “hottest” luxury real estate markets across the United States. San Francisco joins New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, DC on this collection of growing markets in the luxury real estate industry. Thea Miller , a sales and marketing professional who specializes in luxury properties, comments on the growth of the San Francisco market.

“As the Bay Area‘s housing market continues to heat up once again, it’s catching the attention of the media—and it is shining a spotlight on the rebound that the market is making,” comments Thea Miller . “In a front-page story in the Chronicle, titled ‘Bay Area Home Sales, Prices Surging,’ reporter Carolyn Said explores the extremely strong housing numbers that were released by DataQuick, which is a La Jolla-based information services company. She has examined the catalysts of the housing turnaround. DataQuick, in its monthly report, asserts that the median sale price for Bay Area properties in December rose to $442,750, a stunning 32 percent increase from a year ago and the largest jump in 25 years of record keeping.”

Miller goes on to explain that, according to the article, sales increased year-over-year for the 18th month in a row, ultimately climbing 4.5 percent in just the last month. She cites CaliforniaMoves.com data reporting that San Francisco and Santa Clara County achieved double-digit sales growth year over year with 29.5 percent and 13.1 percent increases, respectively.

“It’s good to see that Bay Area news and other media are on top of this story, but what’s especially gratifying is that they’re getting out the message that we have a severe shortage of homes for sale in the region and sellers are getting good prices for their homes once again,” asserts Miller. “My hope is that homeowners who have been sitting on the sidelines will begin to realize that this market presents a tremendous opportunity for them to get top dollar for their home. Right now, it’s a red-hot seller’s market. But as we know, it won’t always be that way. If traditional patterns apply this year, there will be some added inventory in March and April. This will bring more opportunities for buyers, but it will also incite additional competition between sellers, compared to the way the market stands today.”

Miller encourages any individuals who are contemplating selling a luxury property in the Bay Area to contact a qualified professional to discuss the value of putting their homes on the market while conditions are still in their favor. 

ABOUT:

Thea Miller is a luxury property specialist. With over two decades of experience, Thea Miller guides her clients through the market in San Francisco, California. Thea Miller provides a high degree of customer support while paying close attention to detail and providing insight regarding local property values and activities. She is a member of The National Association of Realtors, The San Francisco Association of Realtors, The California Association of Realtors, Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate, and Top Agent Network, of which she is a verified member.

Media Contact: Jordan Hope Mark-PR.com, (678) 685-8304, mark@mark-pr.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE Thea Miller

Article source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thea-miller-comments-on-growing-luxury-real-estate-market-190648651.html

The median price for houses and condominiums in the nine-
county Bay Area increased to $400,000, up 2.6 percent from April
and 7.5 percent from May 2011, the San Diego-based data seller
said today in a statement. Almost 39 percent of purchases
exceeded $500,000, the most since August 2010.

“It’s not exactly a stampede, but people are starting to
move off the housing-market sidelines in numbers we haven’t seen
in quite a while,” DataQuick President John Walsh said in the
statement. “Foreclosures are a significantly smaller portion of
what’s selling, and the higher-cost coastal markets are seeing
more activity.”

Total sales in the Bay Area rose to 8,810, up 15 percent
from the previous month and 26 percent from May 2011. It was the
highest tally for the month since 2006. Foreclosure sales
accounted for 22 percent of the total, down from almost 27
percent a year earlier and the lowest since January 2008.

Prices in both San Francisco and Santa Clara counties rose
6.2 percent, to a median $701,000 and $529,000, respectively.
The biggest increase was in Contra Costa County, where the
median gained 16 percent to $295,000. The Marin County median
price fell 2 percent to $627,000, according to DataQuick.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Dan Levy in San Francisco at
dlevy13@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Kara Wetzel at
kwetzel@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/san-francisco-bay-area-home-prices-climb-to-22-month-high.html

The number of homes for sale in April hit a 6.6-month supply, down from 9.1 months a year ago, the National Association of Realtors says. A six-month supply is considered a healthy market.

• MORE: Number of homes for sale in 50 top markets and change from a year ago

Some markets have fallen below that. Last month, nine of 18 leading markets tracked by real estate brokerage Redfin had less than a three-month supply. That means it would have taken three months to sell all of the listed homes at April’s sales pace.

Those markets included the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Denver and Washington, D.C. A year ago, only Phoenix had such a low inventory, Redfin’s data show.

“Multiple offers are definitely the norm,” says Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage for the San Francisco Bay Area. At one point this month, 80% of the properties that his agents were working to buy or sell had multiple offers, Turley says.

Unlike the days during the housing bubble, house shoppers are more likely to go to the sidelines after making three or four offers, he says.

“We’re seeing a significant number of people step back from multiple bids,” says Glenn Kelman, Redfin CEO. “They say, ‘I’m not going to make the mistake people made in 2006.’ “

Compared with a year ago, supplies are tighter in every price category in 47 of 50 top U.S. markets, according to real estate website Zillow. Leaner supplies of lower-price homes are especially evident in some markets.

In Phoenix, San Francisco and Las Vegas, the number of lower-price homes for sale has dropped 64%, 53% and 50%, respectively, in the past year, Zillow’s analysis found. That’s a bigger drop than what’s occurred for higher-price homes in those markets, Zillow’s data show.

Tight inventories will push up prices, encouraging more people to list homes, Zillow economist Stan Humphries says.

Plenty are waiting. “Every Realtor knows divorced couples living in the same house because they’re waiting for higher prices,” says Remax Realtor Kathie Shandro in Denver.

Many people lack enough home equity to buy again, CoreLogic economist Mark Fleming says. CoreLogic says 45% of mortgage holders have less than 20% home equity.

Fewer foreclosed homes are also coming to market, Fleming says. Plus, lower-priced homes are attractive to investors, who’re turning them into rentals, Fleming says.

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/story/2012-05-24/Housing-becomes-sellers-market/55194106/1

“Sales are subpar, prices mainly flat and I don’t anticipate much change,” said Andrew LePage, an analyst with San Diego’s DataQuick, which produced the report. “Lots of people are stacked up on the sidelines, waiting for a better time to buy or sell when things are more certain.”

The median price for all homes – resale, new and condos – sold across the nine Bay Area counties in November was $363,500, down 4.3 percent from a year ago.

The total number of properties changing hands edged up 3.4 percent to 6,317, compared with last year.

Not much inventory

Low inventory remains an issue as many people are reluctant to sell, said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker’s Bay Area region.

“The home seller who becomes a move-up buyer is almost like a missing generation,” he said. “We have some people out there with an appetite (to buy) who have a down payment and can qualify, but because of the ho-hum market, there isn’t inventory for them.”

Turley said he sees about 4 1/2 months’ worth of inventory for high-end homes and just a few weeks’ worth on the low end.

Cindi Hagley, managing broker at Prudential California Realty in San Ramon, observed similar dynamics.

“We have multiple offers on almost everything we sell for under $400,000,” she said.

But at the other end, “People who could theoretically afford to buy bigger homes are hunkering down a bit,” Hagley said. “People are downsizing” rather than moving up.

High-end sales are also taking a hit from a change in the conforming loan limit, which eliminates most government-backed mortgages between $625,501 and $729,750. Lawmakers restored FHA loans in that bracket, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages are no longer available.

“We don’t know yet to what extent FHA and the private mortgage market can fill that void,” LePage said.

The tighter financing for high-end homes is reflected in declining sales volume.

Low-price purchases

For instance, in Santa Clara County, November sales of homes over $800,000 were down 18.2 percent from a year earlier, while sales of homes under $300,000 rose 22.3 percent compared with November 2010, LePage said.

Throughout the real estate downturn, sales of higher-end homes have declined dramatically. Mortgages above $417,000 accounted for about 29.7 percent of November’s purchase lending, DataQuick said. Before 2007, such “jumbo” mortgages represented almost 60 percent of local purchase loans.

Distressed sales – foreclosures and short sales sold for less than is owed on the mortgage – remain a potent force, accounting for almost half of all resales in the Bay Area in November.

Investor activity remains high, with absentee buyers snapping up 22.6 of all homes sold last month compared with a regular monthly average of 13.9 percent since 2000. All-cash buyers represented 27.9 percent of November sales.

Other national reports out this week underscored the market’s continued malaise:

– Real estate service Zillow.com said values nationwide were down 5.1 percent in October compared with a year earlier. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, it said, values fell 6.3 percent and are now 33.8 percent off their peak.

– Foreclosure service RealtyTrac said November foreclosure filings nationwide were down 14 percent compared with a year ago. But the company said that despite that seasonal slowdown, numbers suggest a new surge of foreclosures in coming months.

California foreclosure auctions hit a 10-month high in November and the state had the nation’s second-highest foreclosure rate (after Nevada) with 1 in every 211 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in the month. Bucking the national trend, California foreclosure filings rose 11 percent in November compared with 2010.

– Move.com, the nation’s largest online collection of for-sale listings, with data from all of the country’s 900-plus multiple listing services, showed national inventory down 21.3 percent in November compared with a year ago and median list prices up 4.05 percent.

In the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin, Move.com showed median list prices basically flat compared with a year ago and inventory down significantly. Homes in those counties sold much faster than those elsewhere in the country, with an average inventory age of 76 days versus 114 days nationwide.

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/15/BU6K1MCHQJ.DTL

Bay Area home sales rebounded in August after a surprise drop in July but still remained far below historic levels according to data collected by real estate information provider DataQuick.

A total of 7,513 new and resale homes were sold in August in the nine county Bay Area, which includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma Counties. That was a gain of 9.1 percent from July’s 6,887 sales and also a gain of 12.2 percent from the 6,698 sales posted in August of 2010.

The Bay Area historically sees a sales increase of 3.4 percent between July and August. Home sales in the Bay Area were 22.4 percent below the historic August average of 9,682 homes sold. The lowest amount of homes sold in the Bay Area in August since 1988 was 6,688 in 1992, while the highest amount of homes sold was 13,940 in 2004.

However, because August had 23 business days in which home sales could be recorded compared to 20 days in July, the average number of homes sold per day in August was actually five percent lower than in July but were still 7.3 percent higher than in August 2010.

“The sliver of positive news here is that, no matter how you look at it, last month’s sales beat the year-ago numbers, which were pretty lousy. Lower prices and mortgage rates lured some homebuyers off the sidelines last month, but too many others lacked the confidence to step into the game. They worried about their job, or about prices falling more. Others couldn’t get a loan because credit remains drum-tight, or they couldn’t move because they’re underwater,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.

The median price for new and resale homes and condos declined 1.1 percent to $370,000 in August compared to $374,000 in July. The median price was down 3.9 percent from $385,000 in August of 2010, the eleventh straight month that year-over-year home prices have dropped.

By comparison, the lowest median price posted during the current real estate cycle was $290,000 in March 2009, while the peak median price was $665,000 in July/August 2007.

Distressed home sales made up 45.0 percent of the Bay Area’s resale market last month, with foreclosure re-sales accounting for 26.4 percent of re-sales in August, up from 25.9 percent in July, while short sales made up about 18.6 percent of Bay Area’s sales last month, down from 18.8 percent in July.

Foreclosure re-sales peaked at 52.0 percent in February 2009 while the historic rate of foreclosure re-sales is about nine percent.

Tags: Bay Area, DataQuick, home sales, home prices, spring selling season, median sales price, new homes, re-sale homes

Source:
Dataquick

Article source: http://loanrateupdate.com/mortgages/bay-area-home-sales-rebound-in-august-but-prices-fall

Throughout the nine counties, the median paid for an existing single-family house in July was $400,000, down 7.5 percent from the same month last year, according to DataQuick, a San Diego real estate research firm. A total of 5,096 homes changed hands in the month, virtually the same as in July 2010.

“More people became more concerned about the future and took a step back to the housing sidelines as we saw an increasing number of negative reports on the economy and jobs, and people fretted about the outcomes of the debt-ceiling debate in Washington, D.C.,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst.

The median is strongly influenced by the mix of homes sold: more low-cost homes changing hands results in a lower median. DataQuick said sales of homes above $500,000 fell 19.2 percent compared with a year earlier, while sales of homes below $500,000 were up 3.5 percent over July 2010.

Many of the low-end transactions relied on low-down payment, government-backed Federal Housing Administration mortgages. They accounted for 22.4 percent of all Bay Area home purchase loans in July.

Distressed home sales remain a significant market force. Bank resales of foreclosed homes accounted for 26.6 percent of Bay Area resales in July. Short sales – in which people sell their home for less than they owe on the mortgage – represented 18.8 percent of resold homes.

As has been true throughout the housing downturn, coastal counties with easy access to job centers performed better than those in outlying regions. The median for San Francisco resales was virtually flat at $715,000 versus $714,500 a year earlier. Median prices for existing homes in Santa Clara, San Mateo and Marin counties were down about 3 percent.

“There is no question that Santa Clara and San Francisco (counties) have stood out as being relatively stable, given the strength of their local job markets and the constrained supplies,” LePage said.

But medians declined more steeply in Napa (down 15 percent), Solano (down 9.9 percent), Sonoma (down 8.6 percent), Contra Costa (down 8.5 percent) and Alameda (down 6.4 percent) counties.

For all homes, including resale homes, resale condos and new homes, sales volume inched up 1.7 percent and the median price fell 7 percent to $374,000 from $402,000.

Two competing factors affect the housing outlook for the rest of the year. On the one hand, consumer concerns about their finances were exacerbated by the wild ride the stock market has taken this month. On the other hand, interest rates are at historic lows and home prices are more affordable than in years past.

Even the best-case scenario doesn’t involve an immediate recovery but rather an extended period of prices bouncing along the bottom.

“I think it’s likely we’re in for a long period of stagnation,” LePage said. “If we get worse news on jobs and the economy and see big dips in the stock market, we could see prices come down some more. Of course (even with stagnation) prices will always bounce around a bit.”

The California Association of Realtors, which on Monday issued its report for July, had a similar take.

“Economic uncertainty and recent developments in financial markets have caused hesitation among buyers, the effects of which we may see in the coming months,” said Leslie Appleton-Young, the group’s chief economist, in a statement. “We must see sustained job and income gains along with an increase in consumer confidence before we can expect to see consistent improvement in the housing market.”

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/16/BUD91KO7CA.DTL