Friday, April 13, 2007
Contra Costa Home prices on the Rise
Prices also up in Alameda County, down Solano County; sales increase in March but down from 2006 - By Barbara E. Hernandez, CONTRA COSTA TIMES.
The median price paid for a Bay Area home in March was $639,000, up 3.1 percent in a month's time, bucking the national trend and regaining much of the decline since last summer, but the chorus still isn't singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." - George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer.
"The housing market in the state will show a substantial decline this year, on the order of 2 or 3 percent,'' said Ken Rosen, director of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at UC Berkeley. Moreover, he said he expects the state's housing market to stay soft for a while.
"We had such a large run-up (in home prices) in the state as a whole in the last four years and now there is excess inventory in unsold houses -- in San Diego, Sacramento, Orange County and the Central Valley in particular,'' Rosen said. "Usually, the reaction time to an overheated market is two to three years.''
On the day after the normally glass-is-half-full Realtors trade association said the median price of existing U.S. homes will fall nearly a percentage point this year, DataQuick said that Bay Area prices are holding their only-in-the-Bay Area value.
"Prices seem to have held up surprisingly well, probably because of a relatively strong economy. Additionally, it's starting to look like much of the current sales lull may be due to the strong sales in 2004 and 2005. Some of today's demand probably got pulled into that period because of low mortgage interest rates and the availability of exotic mortgages," said Marshall Prentice, DataQuick president.
Levy, at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, said that the housing downturn of the 1990s, with slow and flat activity in prices and sales volumes, lasted seven years and that there is no reason to believe the current downturn will be short term. "I think we are closer to the middle of the housing adjustment process than to the end,'' he said.
"What the National Association of Realtors said about the price of homes going down screams volumes,'' Thornberg added. "It says, 'Guess what. This is not over. We have a ways to go.' To think we are out of the woods is silly.''
"The big story,'' said Michael Lehmann, professor emeritus of economics at the University of San Francisco, "was the big surge in prices of homes between 2000 to 2005. That is over here and everywhere,'' he said. "And overall, if the weakness continues across the nation, it will be hard for the Bay Area to resist it in the long run."
The median price paid for a Bay Area home in March was $639,000, up 3.1 percent in a month's time, bucking the national trend and regaining much of the decline since last summer, but the chorus still isn't singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." - George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer.
"The housing market in the state will show a substantial decline this year, on the order of 2 or 3 percent,'' said Ken Rosen, director of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at UC Berkeley. Moreover, he said he expects the state's housing market to stay soft for a while.
"We had such a large run-up (in home prices) in the state as a whole in the last four years and now there is excess inventory in unsold houses -- in San Diego, Sacramento, Orange County and the Central Valley in particular,'' Rosen said. "Usually, the reaction time to an overheated market is two to three years.''
On the day after the normally glass-is-half-full Realtors trade association said the median price of existing U.S. homes will fall nearly a percentage point this year, DataQuick said that Bay Area prices are holding their only-in-the-Bay Area value.
"Prices seem to have held up surprisingly well, probably because of a relatively strong economy. Additionally, it's starting to look like much of the current sales lull may be due to the strong sales in 2004 and 2005. Some of today's demand probably got pulled into that period because of low mortgage interest rates and the availability of exotic mortgages," said Marshall Prentice, DataQuick president.
Levy, at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, said that the housing downturn of the 1990s, with slow and flat activity in prices and sales volumes, lasted seven years and that there is no reason to believe the current downturn will be short term. "I think we are closer to the middle of the housing adjustment process than to the end,'' he said.
"What the National Association of Realtors said about the price of homes going down screams volumes,'' Thornberg added. "It says, 'Guess what. This is not over. We have a ways to go.' To think we are out of the woods is silly.''
"The big story,'' said Michael Lehmann, professor emeritus of economics at the University of San Francisco, "was the big surge in prices of homes between 2000 to 2005. That is over here and everywhere,'' he said. "And overall, if the weakness continues across the nation, it will be hard for the Bay Area to resist it in the long run."
Labels: Bay Area Real Estate, CAR, Continuing Study of the California Economy, Contra Costa Times, DataQuick, Real Estate Cycles, San Francisco Chronicle
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