Homes and Real Estate Blog

The Fullerton real estate market, a component of the Newport Beach and Orange County housing markets, is starting to show signs of a strong recovery. According to a June 7, 2010 article from the Orange County Register, “The long-suffering building industry is starting to talk seriously about a housing rebound. Emile Haddad, CEO of Aliso Viejo-based Five Point Communities, which manages several housing developments for Lennar Corp. boldly said: ‘I think 2011 will start to feel good. I think 2012 will feel very good,’ Haddad said. ‘I think a lot of wounds we’re feeling will be gone.’” The piece, composed by Jonathan Lansner, went on to state that “The homebuilders ‘machine’ is broken, Haddad said. Builders’ production capacity has been drastically curtailed during the slump, and that will result a shortage of new housing in the near futures, driving up prices.”

This remarkable turnaround for Fullerton homes for sale and the rest of Orange County was also referenced in a June 7, 2010 article also from the Orange County Register. This piece stated that “New figures from Costa Mesa-based Hanley Wood Market Intelligence show that Irvine Co. sales success at its Woodbury projects in Irvine helped push Orange County’s total for new homes going into escrow to the highest level in two years.” The article, written by Jeff Collins, went on to note that “Buyers signed contracts to purchase 523 new homes in Orange County during this year’s winter quarter. That’s the highest number of sales contracts for any quarter since the spring of 2008…Sales contracts saw the highest quarterly percentage gain in records dating back to 2007.”

The median sales price of Fullerton real estate and the rest of Orange County did decline slightly in the month of April, although the figure was substantially higher than the last years’ figure. According to a May 18, 2010 article from the Orange County Business Journal, “Orange County’s median home price edged down $2,000 in April from March, but still stands $50,000 higher than the prices seen here a year ago. The median price of a home sold here in April was $430,000, a less than 1% drop from a month earlier, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick…”

The Santa Clara real estate market, part of the larger Silicon Valley housing market, saw increases in two key indicators during the month of April 2010. According to a May 20, 2010 article from the Mercury News, “Santa Clara County posted only a slight gain in home sales last month compared with April 2009, but the median home price jumped 26 percent. The median price of previously owned single-family houses sold last month was $550,000, up 26.4 percent from $435,000 in April 2009, and flat from March 2010, according to a report Thursday from MDA DataQuick.” The piece, composed by Sue McAllister, continued to state that “The median condo price rose 31 percent from last year, to $335,000…In Santa Clara County, 1,185 houses sold last month, up just 1.2 percent from the same time last year, and up7 percent from March of this year. By contrast, sales in the last few months of last year and in March this year increased by double-digit percentages compared with year-earlier totals.”

The rise in Santa Clara homes for sale that were actually purchased was the focus of a May 31, 2010 article in the Mercury News. This piece noted that “The local housing market continues to show improvement in sales and value of homes, though overall home sales in the nine-county Bay Area and the state as a whole, showed mixed results during the month of April, according to latest real estate sales and price reports.” The article by Rose Meily went on to note that “MDA DataQuick reports sales for all new and resale homes and condos in Santa Clara County rose 3.1 percent in April compared with the same period last year. A total of 1,656 homes sold in April, up from 1,606 homes sold in April 2009.” The median home price for all homes jumped 20.7 percent from $405,000 in April of 2009 to $489,000 this year.”

Jeff Bull, president of the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors, added that “Sales activity in the high-end market appeared sluggish around this time last year, but there is more activity in this price range this year because high-end financing has loosened a bit and the government tax credits may have provided the additional incentive for buyers to make their move.”

A market that has seen much back and forth and confusion amid the housing crisis in the U.S., the San Diego real estate market continues to show mixed signals, though as of late the good have outweighed the bad, suggesting that perhaps the city’s real estate sectors has hit the bottom and may be on its way back to a state of normalcy.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, in December 2009, an index of housing prices showed that San Diego County’s home prices rose a slight 0.1% from the month preceding. This was the eight-consecutive month that the San Diego market showed an increase, the longest streak among 20 metro areas the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index monitors. The index showed that prices of San Diego homes for sale in December were up 2.7% from the same time one year earlier. The index, set at 100 for January 2000, stood at 156.29, up 8.2% from a low of 144.43 in April but still 7.6% below the record high of 250.34 set in November 2005.

Norm Miller, vice president at Costar Group, told the Union Tribune that the price per square foot fell nearly 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, even though prices overall seemed to be rising, “Sellers are coming onto the market with slightly higher-quality properties or are being more optimistic,” Miller said. “And yet sold property prices are going down a little. So, we’re getting a gap again between buyers and sellers, and that means the inventory will start to build up again over the next couple of months — and that will continue and the market will soften a little more until we get to another wave of buyer tax credit expirations, which will hit late spring.”

In another sign for optimism, the county’s rates of foreclosures and defaults was also down from December 2009 to January 2010, though that’s not to say there aren’t any homeowners in trouble: There were 986 foreclosures and 1,741 default notices in January, down from 1,515 and 1,741, respectively, in December. Foreclosures were at their lowest level since May, while defaults were at the lowest rate since November 2008.