Bay Area Real Estate Trends

Despite some rosy spin from CAR, California existing home sales finished the year with a whimper. December showed slight improvement from November, but volume was anemic and prices fell 6.2 percent from December 2012. CAR reports: LOS ANGELES (Jan. 17) – California home sales rose for the third consecutive month in December, marking the highest [...]

NAR reports: Existing-home sales continued on an uptrend in December, rising for three consecutive months and remaining above a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors®. The latest monthly data shows total existing-home sales rose 5.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.61 million in December from a downwardly revised 4.39 million in November, [...]

DataQuick reports: La Jolla, CA.—-The Bay Area’s housing market rounded out 2011 much the way it started it: with constricted and atypical sales activity, lots of bottom feeding, and a largely dormant mid- to move-up market. Sales were up slightly last month, while prices dropped, a real estate information service reported. A total of 7,494 [...]

DataQuick reports: La Jolla, CA—Southern California home sales surged last month from November – as they normally do – amid relatively strong activity under $300,000 and a record share of sales to “absentee” buyers, mainly investors. But with the purchase plans of many ordinary buyers and sellers still on hold, the year-end rush couldn’t lift [...]

Calculated Risk: Existing Home Sales Revisions. The NAR released the benchmark revisions today. From the NAR: Also released today are benchmark revisions to historic existing-home sales. The 2010 benchmark shows there were 4,190,000 existing-home sales last year, a 14.6 percent revision from the previously projected 4,908,000 sales. For the total period of 2007 through 2010, sales [...]

Impact to Everyday Consumers and REALTORS® from Revised Existing Home Sales. Q. Should consumers care about this revision and re-benchmarking? A. What matters for consumers is the price of their home and there is no revision to prices. For home-buyers and home-sellers, the newly revised national data has no impact, because only very localized data matters [...]