Testimonials for Blog

First, the good news: The real estate market has clawed its way back from the brink and is about a third of the way to a normal, pre-bubble market. The bad news: It’s going to take until the end of 2015 to get us the rest of the way, and recovery could take even longer if the economy loses steam again. Real estate website Trulia’s new housing barometer shows that real estate is starting to recover from the battering it sustained during the recession. Chief economist Jed Kolko looked at construction starts, existing home sales and the rate of delinquencies

I’m trying real hard to keep a long-term perspective when it comes to statistical real estate trends. So my pledge to ignore short-term moves — read it here — was tested when the folks at Zillow releases their periodic survey of economists across the nation to see their outlook for housing values. I found some interesting data within a Zillow report entitled “Economists Temper Housing Recovery Expectations” where these real estate trackers chose to look at a three-month dip in economists’ housing expectations. Zillow’s poll of 104 economists found these projected house gains vs. what was the concensus projection in

Potential homebuyers and sellers are growing more confident that the U.S. real estate market will begin to recover as soon as next year, according to a Prudential Real Estate survey. Sixty percent of people surveyed last month had positive views about the housing market and 70 percent expected property values to improve over the next two years, according to the survey released today. About 63 percent of respondents said they considered real estate a good investment, up from 52 percent last year, the Irvine, California-based broker reported. This is the second consecutive year consumer confidence in housing has improved, signaling

“Home prices across the nation saw light levels of depreciation in February, consistent with the trend we have seen over the last several months,” said Dr. Alex Villacorta, Director of Research and Analytics at Clear Capital. “However, the Northeast, Midwest, and West improved performance against last month’s quarterly declines in light of increases in REO saturation, which is unusual and encouraging.” “With this uptick in REO activity, we’ll be keeping a very close eye on the effects of the Attorneys General settlement with servicers, as it could dramatically change the flow of REO properties moving through the foreclosure process and

Short sales continued to soar in January, reaching their highest level in California in three years. The California Association of Realtors reported in its Pending Homes Sales Index that the number of short sales increased from January last year and also from the previous month. A short sale is a real estate transaction in which a homeowner sells a property for less than is owed on it and the lender agrees to discount the payoff. Statewide, short sales accounted for 23.8 percent of all homes in escrow, up from 22.2 percent a year earlier, CAR reported. But short sales dominated

Median home prices went down and home sales enjoyed a slight rise for the whole of California, according to recently reported figures from DataQuick, a research company based in San Diego. This was attributed to the increase of distressed home sales around the San Francisco area and real estate investors in Southern California. According to DataQuick’s report, California’s median home price was at $236,000 for January 2012, marking a 1.1 percent decrease on a year-on-year basis. This is the sixteenth consecutive month the year-on-year median home price went down. Southern California’s median price went down to $260,000, a 3.7 percent

Residential property prices the US decreased again in the fourth quarter of 2011 and few areas are likely to see increases in 2012, according to the latest data from Zillow. It’s latest Home Value Index fell 1.1% but there were less significant declines in the previous two quarters and overall the drop in 2011 was 4.7%. Zillow predicts that home values will continue falling in 2012, but with smaller declines than 2011, probably ending the year 3.7% down. While home values in some individual markets are likely to reach a bottom this year, Zillow does not forecast a definitive national

Silicon Valley developers are racing to erect office and R&D buildings to meet a fresh surge of expansions by tech companies that’s turning the region into a commercial real estate boomtown. Last year, the South Bay added about 26,000 employees, enough to reduce vacancy rates for R&D properties to 16.4 percent, the lowest level since 2007. And as hiring continues and popular Peninsula locations like Mountain View and Palo Alto fill up, real estate brokers say about 16 companies are currently scouring the South Bay for big chunks of space. “Development. We haven’t used that word in a while,” said Chad

If you’re watching the real estate markets, the good news is that the Federal Reserve has pledged to keep interest rates low through 2014. The bad news is that the market is going to need it. The November Case-Shiller housing numbers, released this morning, indicate that prices tumbled 3.7% from the year before. That’s below expectations of a 3.2% drop. Even worse, it contradicts a trend in which the rate of price drops had been slowing. For several months, prices had been falling, but by a slightly smaller percentage each month — indicating a bottoming out. This latest data may

A mood of optimism is evident in the California commercial real estate industry, despite the mixed economic signals of the past sixth months, according to the latest Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast commercial real estate survey. The survey polled a panel of industry professionals on their views of how the market will change over the coming three years. In an essay titled “California Office and Industrial Markets: A Recovery Begins,” Jerry Nickelsburg, a senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast, writes that despite recent events, including the U.S. economy nearly stalling, with GDP growth below 2 percent, and shaky confidence in