The Sun Also Rises – Some Real Estate Positives from Cali

Since I try to mix the good with the bad – the genuine signs of the Recovery with the obvious examples of the Unrecovery, here’s some sunshine…

Eagle-eyed reader Alex M from PA picked up on some data about the California housing market that’s worth mentioning.  The highlights below come from a story on DQNews, a real estate data site:

1.  In June, 40,965 houses and condos were sold statewide, which was an increase of 9.3 percent from April (28,111), and up 4.9 percent from the 37,967 houses sold in May 2009 (see chart).

2. The median price for a California home sold last month was $278,000, up 9 percent from $255,000 in April and up 20.9 percent from $230,000 a year ago (see chart).

3. The year-over-year increase was the seventh in a row (starting in December 2009, which is likely the bottom for home prices in CA), following 27 months of year-over-year declines.

4. Of the existing homes sold last month, 35.5 percent were properties that had been foreclosed on during the past year, down from 38.1 percent in April and down from 50.2 percent a year ago (see chart). The last time foreclosure resales were as low was in March 2008, 27 months ago.

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Josh here – Are we building off of an extremely low base to come up with these increasing comps?  Sure – but building is the operative word.

Can we extrapolate the California data for all of the US?  Not really, but California is perhaps the most important housing market to watch because it was probably the most over-mortgaged, overbuilt, over-hyped market out there.  It’s the state in which all the wrongs of the binge were exaggerated and it probably has the longest road to salvation in terms of actual recovery.

The question now, in my mind, is how deleterious the disappearance  of the $8,000 buyer’s credit will be and what will increasing taxes do to the economic recovery in general.

Source:

California May Home Sales (DQNews)

h/t – Thanks, Alex, good find.