(Source: By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen Times-Herald, Vallejo, Calif.) – Solano County homeowners lost about half their property’s value since the housing bubble burst, which, like elsewhere, seriously impacted the area’s economy, experts say.

Four years after the recession hit in December 2007, five Bay Area counties have lost a collective $386 billion in home value, according to the real estate information gathering firm, DataQuick. Among those, Contra Costa County was hit the hardest, followed by Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco. There was a wide variation within counties, with some areas hit harder than others, and Solano County was among the hardest hit.

The median Solano County home price in December, 2001 was $355,000, but had fallen to $185,000 by last month, former Solano Association of Realtors president Todd Willis said. The damage was not as bad, although it was still significant, in Napa County, where the median house sold last month for $335,425 compared to $569,450 in December, 2007, Willis said.

The loss in property values resulted in a corresponding loss in property tax revenues for Solano County.

“Overall revenues for the county, basically since the start of 2007, we’ve lost a cumulative $6.6 billion, or 15 percent, in the value of the assessment roll,” Solano County Assessor/Recorder Marc Tonnesen and Assistant Assessor-Recorder Kathy Eodossa said. “That’s about $66 million in property taxes.”

And that translates into deteriorating roads and other quality of life issues, current Solano

Association of Realtors President Paul Winders said.

Solano and Napa counties are by no means alone in this.

The average home in Contra Costa County lost about $343,000 in value; followed by Alameda County with about $291,000. Santa Clara County homes on average lost 245,000 and San Mateo County $222,000, according to DataQuick.

During the boom, home equity loans helped launch small businesses, paid for kitchen remodels, new boats and trucks, vacations, college tuitions and was a kind of security blanket for those nearing retirement. Those have essentially dried up — new bank-originated home equity lines of credit have plunged in the Bay Area by nearly 90 percent — reducing confidence and crushing many of those same businesses. And making matters worse, while the equity went away, the debt remained, further hobbling those who hung on to their homes.

Vallejo’s Vigil Mechanical owner Cam Vigil said his business floundered at the start of the recession, but some strategic adjustments have pulled it through.

“It was bad for a couple years, but we fought through it and we’re doing fine, now,” Vigil said of his heating and air conditioning company. “We started aggressively going after the commercial clients when the residential dried up. We lowered our prices, and our workers are working for less than they ever have before and we’re working mostly out of the area. But last year was a banner year and 2012, looks good.”

Your ads will be inserted here by

Easy AdSense Pro.

Please go to the plugin admin page to paste your ad code.

Taxable sales, an indicator of business health and consumer spending power, were down by double digits in most Bay Area cities between 2007 and 2010, the most recent figures the Board of Equalization has available. There has been a recovery since a 2009 low, but some economists say consumer spending has undergone a permanent change.

“Consumer spending is going to be lower going forward for two reasons,” said Jon Havemen, chief economist with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “Consumers have waked up to the fact that ‘Wow, I need to save for retirement, and not only do I need to save, but I don’t have all this money in my house.”

No one can be sure what changes the new year will bring.

Benicia’s median home sale price continued falling as of last month, for which Willis could offer no explanation, although in Vallejo they seem to have steadily risen since August, he said. There’s good and bad news in this fact, he said.

“This tells me that Solano County is a very affordable place to buy a home now,” Willis said. “I believe that 88 percent of people who live here can afford a home here. The minimum income to qualify for a mortgage here is $24,180. Payment on that, with taxes and insurance, would be $810.”

The news is less positive for existing homeowners, although Willis said he “gets the sense in my daily work, that fewer homes are available and offers are coming in,” which may signal a reversal of fortunes.

“We’re going to see prices stabilize,” said Ken Rosen, chairman at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley. “It’s already happening in pockets like Silicon Valley and San Francisco. If you want to buy a house, it’s probably the best time in California in 30 years.”

MediaNews Group’s Pete Carey contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at (707) 553-6824 or rzrihen@timesheraldonline.com.

___

?2012 Times-Herald (Vallejo, Calif.)

Visit Times-Herald (Vallejo, Calif.) at www.timesheraldonline.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

Article source: http://www.loansafe.org/area-still-feeling-effects-of-real-estate-crash

After two years during which tax rolls in most of the nine Bay Area counties shrank, often by large margins, this year property tax rolls are fairly flat compared with last year, the assessors said. Admittedly, they’re being compared with a lower base.

“We’re in a holding pattern,” said Marc Tonnesen, assessor for Solano County, one of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. Solano’s tax roll was down just 1.56 percent this tax year, after falling 3.62 percent last year and 11 percent the year before. Two cities, Benicia and Fairfield, actually posted gains in their property tax rolls, he said.

One trend is that assessors are starting to restore assessed value to some properties whose tax bills were reduced during the downturn. Under California’s Proposition 8, assessors must reduce a property’s tax value when it drops below the market rate and then restore the value as the market improves.

“We’re beginning to see signs, however meager, of improvement in the market,” said Larry Stone, Santa Clara County assessor. The county partially restored value to 45,000 properties, largely in more affluent areas, he said. Overall, Santa Clara’s assessment roll was up 0.88 percent this year.

Its gain was almost perfectly in line with the increase in inflation allowed under Proposition 13. Under Prop. 13, properties’ tax value can increase 2 percent per year or by the California consumer price index, whichever is less. This year the index was 0.753 percent. (The increases in value for previously reduced properties are an exception to the Prop. 13 cap.)

Santa Clara, whose county seat is San Jose, acts as a leading indicator of market trends, said Bill Rousseau, chief deputy assessor in Sonoma County. “It’s usually a couple of years ahead of the Bay Area,” he said. “In the 1990s, after the downturn, Santa Clara came back about two years before we did.”

San Francisco, which has been the most bulletproof county during the downturn, was the only one where the roll rose last year (by 4 percent). This year, it was up by 1.3 percent, the biggest increase of any county.

“Our residential market bottomed out last year and it is still on the road to recovery,” said Assessor Phil Ting. “We haven’t seen properties being restored to prior values yet, but we will probably see that in the next year or two.”

Some hard-hit counties are still struggling to dig out. Contra Costa’s tax roll was almost flat after falling 3.39 percent last year and 7.6 percent the year before. About half of the properties – 180,000 – got their assessments reduced because they’re worth less than their base year factored value (the sales price plus the annual inflation factor). While 2,000 properties saw some values restored, most were bumped up only marginally, said Gus Kramer, county assessor.

Compared with coastal areas with job centers, Contra Costa lags, he said.

“Santa Clara and San Francisco counties are both basically hubs of the high-tech industry,” he said. “We don’t have that here in Contra Costa. Unemployment is still extremely high in this county.”

Meanwhile, San Mateo County has not seen a recovery yet, said Assessor Mark Church. “The market is still struggling to correct and is weak,” he said. “We continue to experience declines in value in some areas but we’re also experiencing some restorations in value.”

Alameda County is a microcosm of the scattershot way real estate markets recover. While 83,700 properties were assessed lower than their base value this year, 22,800 had value partially restored (which still means they are lower than base year value) and another 2,600 were fully restored to their pre-downturn values, plus the annual inflation factor.

Properties getting a bump up in value after having declined “seem to be all over the county in different (price-point) stratas,” said Assessor Ron Thomsen.

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/2011/09/10/BUJG1L0PG9.DTL