San Diego - Home Prices rose the highest BUT where are all the foreclosures?

DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage said the flood of foreclosures is being sopped up by investors and first-time buyers eager to take advantage of low prices.

LePage said that demand should lessen worries about the shadow inventory — homes that lenders have foreclosed on but have not yet been listed for sale. Some analysts have feared that banks would try to sell too many properties at once, depressing prices and leading to more foreclosures.

“My hunch is most foreclosures, if they’re priced right, go really fast,” LePage said. “We snapped up in California, on average, 17,000 to 18,000 foreclosure homes a month in 2009. It was an impressive clip, and that’s what kept the inventory of foreclosed homes from ballooning way out of control.”

In San Diego, he said 83.8 percent of foreclosures had been sold as of last fall and some that hadn’t changed hands are being rented.

Compared with a year ago, many doubts about the real estate market have dissipated, said Ross Starr, an economist at the University of California San Diego.
“A year ago, the world was falling apart,” Starr said. “We were hanging on for it to stop — and it stopped.”

Starr said the market is now in a “rocky period” of adjustment and it is unlikely prices will climb quickly.

So are we going to see a wave of foreclosures that everyone is talking about? Time will tell but .....

As for potential home buyers, UCSD’s Starr said now may be the time to strike, given historically low interest rates and reduced prices.
“For a well-financed buyer who stayed on the sidelines in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and who said prices were ridiculous, his foresight has been fulfilled and this is a great time,” Starr said.

San Diego home prices last month rose 15.8 percent from a year ago to a median $285,000, MDA DataQuick reported Tuesday, further evidence that the region’s real estate market is stabilizing and the HIGHEST rise of all Southern California's counties. We were the first to hit bottom, now the first to start rising, if only slowly and THAT'S NORMAL!

Sales were up for the 21st consecutive month, as transactions involving higher-priced, move-up homes kicked in to broaden the market beyond low-cost starter homes.


With sales rising, inventories lower, interest rates attractive and buyer interest growing, the latest report suggests that the market reached bottom last year and a recovery, if not under way, will come soon.

“Home values have stopped falling and there are signs that they’re edging up from the bottom,” said University of San Diego economist Alan Gin.


Jane LovedayWindermere Real Estate Agent619-519-1615 Cell http://janeloveday.com/http://www.facebook.com/realestatesandiego