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

Real estate returns are not rocket science.  Because they’re such a huge portion of the consumer balance sheet they tend to be tied very closely to wage growth.  Wage growth, by definition, is very closely tied to the rate of inflation.  That explains why the long-term historical return of real estate is roughly in-line with the rate of inflation.  But this survey from Zillow shows that real estate “investors” are probably still too optimistic.

I can see why these assumptions are attractive, but they are not quite what drops out of macroeconomic analysis.

Fundamental Upward Pressure of Prices

Wage growth, per se, shouldn’t drive housing prices. What we might expect is that wage growth drives rents and rents drive housing prices.

The wage-rent relationship, however, is not an iron law.

Matt Yglesias and Ryan Avent are famous for pointing out that rents – and hence housing prices – could be much lower in coastal cities if residents would abandon restrictive zoning laws. For example, Dallas and Philadelphia have roughly the same median household income, but home prices in Philly are much higher than in Dallas.

In general, if a fundamental driver – regulation, technology, preference – causes rents to eat up a higher portion of folks pay checks then rents and home prices will be higher.

To some extent the national rise in home prices is due to both technology and preferences driving more people to want to live in high rent areas like the Northeast Corridor.

Those same forces are leading some people to want to live in Houston, Austin and Raleigh-Durham, but because of looser regulation that simply translates into booming housing supply and a booming population rather than higher prices.

In addition, the relationship between rent and housing prices depends on interest rates – both the real portion and expected inflation. A house is like a utility company. Instead of providing power services, it provides shelter services and keeps you from having to pay rent.

Many finance folks are familiar with the rule-of-thumb that utilities tend to trade like bonds. Higher interest rates lead to lower bond and utility stock prices. Lower interest rates lead to higher bond and utility stock prices.

This is because – like a house – you are receiving a fixed stream of services over a long period of time.

Though this framing is kinda technical, most of these factors can be summed up in a really straightforward comparison: monthly rent vs. monthly mortgage payment for similar homes.

When the market is balanced the monthly mortgage payment should be slightly higher than the rental payment because 1) Mortgages get a tax break and 2) Traditional rate mortgages offer you the stability of a fixed payment.

Adjustable rate mortgages  (ARM) need to produce a payment close to or even below rent to be a good buy. That’s because you lose the security of a fixed payment and depending on the terms of the ARM you may actually be facing more payment volatility than with renting.

Trulia crunches the numbers and it looks like under their baseline assumptions its cheaper to buy than to rent in every one of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the United States.

In traditional hotspots like the San Francisco Bay area, New York City and Orange County, CA, the discount is low. Still this is a recipe for fundamentals house price appreciation.

Bubble Territory

If housing prices merely stabilized into a sustainable equilibrium with rents then the future probably wouldn’t be too dramatic. We would see a rapid shoot-up in home prices now, followed by a long period of little to no price growth as the Fed raised interest rates.

Rents would still be going up and monthly mortgage payments would rise with them to maintain equilbrium. However, mortgages payments would be rising because interest rates were rising, not because home prices were rising.

Eventually, the Fed would stop raising rates and home prices would start to drift higher and eventually home price growth would converge to rent growth.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/03/25/the-housing-bubble-is-back/

La Jolla, CA. – January 16, 2012 – (RealEstateRama) — The pace at which the Bay Area housing market is making up for lost ground quickened at the end of 2012 as sales increased year-over-year for the 18th month in a row and the median price rose at its fastest rate in more than 25 years. The market remained constrained by a tight supply of homes for sale and a fussy home loan environment, a real estate information service reported.

The median price paid for a home in the nine-county Bay Area was $442,750 in December. That was up 1.1 percent from $438,000 in November and up 32.0 percent from $335,500 in December a year ago. Last month’s median was the highest since August 2008 when it was $447,000, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.

The 32.0 percent year-over-year increase in the median is the highest in DataQuick’s statistics, which go back to 1988. At least half that increase is due to a change in market mix, with sales shifting away from low-cost distress homes toward more mid-market and move-up homes.

The median reached a high of $665,000 in June/July 2007 and then fell to a low of $290,000 in March 2009. On a year-over-year basis it dropped more than 30 percent each month from August 2008 through May 2009. At the median’s current rate of increase, sometime this spring it will have recovered about half of its loss since its summer 2007 peak.

“Prices are in the midst of bouncing off bottom right now, and nobody really knows what the trajectory of this bounce will be beyond this point. So far, supply has been a bottleneck, but as prices go up, more homes will be put up for sale,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.

“Another bottleneck these days is that mortgage lenders are swamped. Not only by home buyers, but by homeowners who want to refinance. Rising home prices also mean higher appraisals, and tens of thousands of homeowners who couldn’t refinance half a year ago, now can,” Walsh said.

The number of new and resale houses and condos sold last month in the Bay Area was 7,832. That was up 7.3 percent from 7,296 in November, and up 4.5 percent from 7,494 for December 2011.

While last month’s sales count was the highest for any December since 8,372 were sold in 2006, it was still 9.0 percent below the 8,611 average for all Decembers since 1988. December sales have ranged from 5,065 in 2007 to 12,349 in 2003.

The number of homes sold for less than $500,000 decreased 12.6 percent year-over-year, while the number that sold for more than $500,000 shot up 61.2 percent, DataQuick reported.

Last month distressed property sales – the combination of foreclosure resales and “short sales” – made up 34.2 percent of the resale market. That was down from 35.5 percent in November and down from 52.4 percent a year ago.

Foreclosure resales – homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – accounted for 11.8 percent of resales in December, down from a revised 12.5 percent in November, and down from 27.8 percent a year ago. Last month was the lowest since 10.1 percent in November 2007. Foreclosure resales peaked at 52.0 percent in February 2009. The monthly average for foreclosure resales over the past 17 years is about 10 percent.

Short sales – transactions where the sale price fell short of what was owed on the property – made up an estimated 22.4 percent of Bay Area resales last month. That was down from an estimated 23.0 percent in November and down from 24.6 percent a year earlier.

Jumbo loans, mortgages above the old conforming limit of $417,000, accounted for 40.2 percent of last month’s purchase lending, down from a revised 40.3 percent in November, and up from 26.5 percent a year ago. Jumbo usage dropped to 17.1 percent in January 2009. Before the credit crunch struck in August 2007, jumbos accounted for nearly 60 percent of the Bay Area purchase loan market.

Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), an important indicator of mortgage availability, accounted for 11.1 percent of the Bay Area’s home purchase loans. That was down from a revised 12.0 percent in November, and down from 11.6 percent in December last year. Since 2000, ARMs have accounted for 48.7 percent of all purchase loans. ARMs hit a low of 3.0 percent of loans in January 2009.

Government-insured FHA home purchase loans, a popular choice among first-time buyers, accounted for 18.9 percent of all Bay Area home purchase mortgages in December, up from 17.0 percent in November and down from 22.9 percent a year earlier. In recent months the FHA level has the been the lowest since summer 2008, reflecting both tougher qualifying standards and the difficulties first-time buyers have competing with investors and other cash buyers.

The most active lenders to Bay Area home buyers last month were Wells Fargo with 15.5 percent of the market, RPM Mortgage with 4.2 percent and Stearns Lending with 3.4 percent.

Last month absentee buyers – mostly investors – purchased 25.8 percent of all Bay Area homes, an all-time high (absentee statistics go back to January 1999). Last month’s absentee level was up from 24.9 percent in November, and up from 23.8 percent a year ago. Absentee buyers paid a median $315,000 in December, up 34.0 percent from $235,000 a year earlier.

Buyers who appear to have paid all cash – meaning no corresponding purchase loan was found in the public record – accounted for 29.3 percent of sales in December. That was unchanged from November, and up from 27.3 percent a year ago. The monthly average going back to 1988 is 12.5 percent. Cash buyers paid a median $312,500 in December, up 36.2 percent from $229,500 a year earlier.

San Diego-based DataQuick monitors real estate activity nationwide and provides information to consumers, educational institutions, public agencies, lending institutions, title companies and industry analysts. Because of late data availability, sales were estimated in Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

The typical monthly mortgage payment that Bay Area buyers committed themselves to paying last month was $1,561. That was up from $1,544 in November, and up from $1,336 a year ago. Adjusted for inflation, last month’s payment was 44.9 percent below the typical payment in spring 1989, the peak of the prior real estate cycle. It was 59.3 percent below the current cycle’s peak in July 2007.

Indicators of market distress continue to decline. Foreclosure activity remains high by historical standards but well below peak levels reached three years ago. Financing with multiple mortgages is low, down payment sizes are stable, DataQuick reported.

(chart)

All Homes           #Sold     #Sold     Pct.     $Median      Median      Pct.

Dec-11    Dec-12     Chng      Dec-11      Dec-12      Chng

Alameda             1,584     1,623     2.5%    $328,000    $410,000     25.0%

Contra Costa        1,534     1,530    -0.3%    $259,000    $333,500     28.8%

Marin                 280       291     3.9%    $517,818    $660,750     27.6%

Napa                  132       129    -2.3%    $317,500    $350,000     10.2%

Santa Clara         1,611     1,822    13.1%    $440,000    $544,500     23.8%

San Francisco         499       646    29.5%    $594,500    $720,000     21.1%

San Mateo             602       626     4.0%    $500,000    $600,000     20.0%

Solano                714       610   -14.6%    $182,250    $218,000     19.6%

Sonoma                538       555     3.2%    $279,500    $345,000     23.4%

Bay Area            7,494     7,832     4.5%    $335,500    $442,750     32.0%

Source: DataQuick, DQNews.com

edia calls: Andrew LePage (916)456-7157

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Home prices nationally are in real recovery, but the factors pushing those numbers may not be real organic strength in the housing market, but rather stimulus and simple comparisons. This summer the market saw a huge drop in the number of distressed homes for sale, as banks tried to modify more borrowers or opted for short sales, which is when the home is sold for less than the value of the mortgage. Short sales often garner higher prices than bank-owned (REO) sales. Investors, especially big money bulk buyers, flooded the market, pushing prices up on the higher end and causing a severe drop in supplies. (Read More: Pending Home Sales Beat Expectations in July)

Now to comparison, which reveals a striking truth in home prices. They are definitely higher, but not nearly as high as we think. We have to remember that 2011 was what some have deemed the “hangover year” from the government’s home buyer tax credit. The tax credit offered first-time home buyers in 2009 and the first half of 2010 an $8000 credit. That may not sound like much, but the median price of a home in 2009 was $172,500 according to the National Association of Realtors. That means the credit was a full 5 percent of the price of a home…or a full quarter of a 20 percent down payment.

The home buyer tax credit juiced home sales and prices by a lot, but prices then dropped precipitously in 2011. Home prices dropped a full 4 percent from 2010 to 2011 on both the CoreLogic and the Realtors’ index. The SP/Case Shiller national home price index was down 5 percent from Q2 2010 to Q2 2011. In addition to recovery from a hangover, this year mortgage rates are a full percentage point lower than they were in July of 2011, which creates much more purchasing power/stimulus, thereby skewing the comparison even more. (For More: Home Prices on the Rise)

“Bottom line, when you un-adjust, normalize, handicap, overlay stimulus periods, and analyze — based on the massive increase in rates driven purchase power, the distressed mix shift positive skew, pulled-forward effect, and the overwhelmingly more positive sentiment — the June year-over-year Case-Shiller indices only up 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent respectively and July CoreLogic Home Price Index only up 3.8 percent can be viewed as ‘net’ house price depreciation…and should be very disappointing for those looking for ‘escape velocity’ and a ‘durable recovery,’” says housing analyst Mark Hanson.

We are comparing home prices now to the double dip in home prices that we saw last year. On SP/Case Shiller, the national home price index in Q2 2012 is actually down, just under 1 percent from Q2 2009, which was just when the tax credit began but hadn’t fully affected price readings yet. DataQuick shows home median prices at the end of July up 7 percent from a year ago, but up just 4.6 percent from three years ago.

None of this is to say that we are not seeing recovery in housing. It is just important to keep this recovery in perspective, especially when mortgage rates and distressed homes still play such a large role in these monthly numbers. Any shift in either of those categories could have a material effect on the numbers that we watch so closely each month and which play such a critical role in overall housing sentiment.

Questions?  Comments?  And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick