California Housing Market Shows Pockets of Recovery

2009 June 20

June 20 2009 - A home-sales revival that began last year in some of California’s cheaper inland areas has begun to spread to several more expensive coastal areas, another hint that devastated real-estate markets in the state — and other parts of the country — may see less grim days ahead.

Homes are selling briskly again in the lower end of the market in Santa Clara County, just south of San Francisco, with prospective buyers making multiple offers and bidding well above asking prices. The median sales price of a single-family home in May was $445,000 in the county, up 5.7% from February, when prices stopped dropping.

Santa Clara County is one of several areas around the U.S. where prices have dropped far enough to lure buyers, including investors, back into the market. Other metro areas showing this trend include the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, parts of Phoenix and San Diego, said Ivy Zelman, chief executive of research firm Zelman & Associates. Even in glutted markets like southern Florida, investors are “gobbling up distressed inventory” in some areas, she added.

In Northern California, a big factor is first-time buyers like Denise and Steve Petrosky, who are newly optimistic about the market and can afford a home for the first time. The Petroskys in February paid $374,900 for a three-bedroom home in Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose, that last sold in 2006 for $610,000.

The couple were too leery to enter the market last year while prices were still heading down, said Mrs. Petrosky, 43 year old, an office manager, but felt prices had bottomed early this year. “Basically, we had set a budget what we could afford, which was below $400,000,” Mrs. Petrosky said. “When the prices came down below that, we bought, because we could afford to.”

Home prices are still falling in many California markets. But the state’s average existing single-family home price has been inching up for two months, with the median sales price climbing to $256,700 in April from $247,590 in February. Much of that increase is thanks to a growing number of pockets of recovery in the housing market.

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