Sold Home Prices and Buying a House
Buying a house may mean finding the best prices and following home sales rise and decline will give you a basic market valuation. However, you need to be aware of the property information before you buy. Getting the property valuation before you have examined the true potential problems of the specific house may lead to “buying a bad investment” In this segment of home prices in Southern California you need to look at the overall market contingencies.
Buying a house in a good neighborhood will always maintain a better stabilized investment. Buying property in distressed development areas of California like the Inland Empire, San Bernardino and Riverside County will always have more pricing variables. Understanding where the foreclosure’s and REO bank properties are will drill down the details in home pricing fluctuations in California real estate.
The good news is you can find a home in a good location using “micro location’ real estate shopping. Example: You find a property you like in Pasadena but you cannot afford it. By just going east a few miles you may be in a cheaper neighborhood that is still family friendly with better home prices. This means shopping for a house in Monrovia or Walnut will get you into a reasonable area and save you money.
Nationally, sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums rose by 2 percent to 4.99 million units last month, representing the second time in the past 10 months that the housing market has shown an increase in transactional volume, according to the National Association of Realtors.
For the housing market to continue in a positive direction, housing may have to become increasing affordable. Nationally, the median house price dropped to $208,000 in May, falling 6.3% from last year. Many economists see the median house price continuing to fall further, creating a greater opportunity for the housing market to have a sustained recovery sooner.
The inventory of homes is approximately twice the level of a normalized market, which is translating into a large selection of property for buyers to choose from.
In California, 33,024 resale houses and condominiums were sold statewide last month, up 6% from 31,150 in April and down 10.7 percent from 36,975 in May of last year. 38.3% of these were foreclosures, up from 36.7% in April & up 5.4% from May 2007.
The median price paid in California for resale homes in the past month was $339,000, down 4.2% from $354,000 in April, and down 5.4% from May 2007. The changing types of homes being sold and overall depreciation are factors contributing to price declines.
Leading economists and analysts say that this recent rise in home sales is due in part to an emerging dilemma: mortgage rates are on the rise, while median prices continue to decline, creating a new urgency to buy a house. With foreclosures representing a third of the market or more in "distressed" areas, that is creating even more buying opportunities than ever before.