Bay Area Real Estate Market Report for February 2011

Bay Area home’s median sale price fell below the year-ago level for the fifth consecutive month while the sales volume remained virtually unchanged from a year ago. The share of homes sold to investors and Cash Buyers continued to be at record levels. A point to note is that January and February are usually the slow months and may or may not provide any accurate indication for the rest of the year.

A total of 4,991 new and resale houses and condos sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was up 0.5 percent from 4,966 in January but down 0.9 percent from 5,035 in February 2010, according to San Diego-based DataQuick Information Systems.

Sale of Newly Built Homes – Only 243 newly built homes sold in the Bay Area in February, the least for any month since DataQuick started tracking the data. The previous low was 253 in January this year. The biggest problem builders face is that they can compete with prices on resale homes, especially distressed properties.

Distressed sales This is a combination of foreclosed homes and short sales. They accounted for more than 50% of home sales last month. Foreclosure resales accounted for 32.6% of Bay Area Home Sales while Short Sales accounted for 20.3%.

Absentee buyers (mainly investors) They purchased 23.4 percent of all Bay Area homes sold the highest for any month since January 2000, when the absentee statistics began.

All Cash Buyers They accounted for a record 30.9 percent of sales in February, the highest for any month since January 1988.

Bay Area Mortgages

FHA loans continue to be very popular with First Time Home Buyers, which accounted for 23.1 percent of all home purchase mortgages last month.Last month 11.7 percent of the Bay Area home purchase loans were ARMs, compared to, over the past decade when the ARM share (of all loans) averaged 46.2 percent.Jumbo/Conforming Jumbo loans, mortgages above the old conforming limit of $417,000, accounted for 26.8 percent of last month purchase lending, compared to nearly 60 percent of the Bay Area purchase loan market before the credit crunch of 2007.

Real Estate is very local. Sometimes a neighborhood within a City may have a completely different trend than the overall city or county. Be sure to contact your local Real Estate Agent or us if you looking to buy or sell a home in the Bay Area and would like to know how the Real Estate Market is doing.

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