Results tagged “housing” from Economic Alert

The economy is not out of the woods when it comes to foreclosures.

Here's a press release I received on an upcoming event that may help:

Rep. Napolitano, Assemblywoman Norma Torres to hold foreclosure
prevention fair in Pomona.

Rep. Grace F. Napolitano and Assemblywoman Norma Torres will hold a
foreclosure prevention fair in Pomona on Saturday, Aug. 29,
featuring talks by Napolitano, Torres, and Attorney General Jerry Brown,
one-on-one foreclosure and credit counseling in both English and
Spanish, workshops on buying homes and avoiding fraud, and booths
hosted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of
Consumer Affairs, the cities of Norwalk and Montebello, and other
organizations. The fair will run from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the
Village Conference Center, 1444 E. Holt Ave, Pomona. The fair is
completely free and open to the public. Those interested in attending
should register by calling (909) 984-7741 or going to
www.assembly.ca.gov/torres, and bring along mortgage and financial
documents with them if they are looking for a consultation.

Just when you thought the housing market was coming out of the doldrums, things are looking a little less healthy for the year.

Yes, signs are that many more homes are being sold -- 95 percent more compared to December of 2007. Many first-time home buyers and investors have jumped into the market looking for deals.

That's all great.

But a word of caution.

People that study this stuff are wary of the effects of the recession.

People are worried about their jobs. And in that environment, things cold get ugly again as people stay away from the market.

Housing prices are expected to decline throughout much of California next year, but sales of existing homes will continue to rise, according to a report by the California Association of Realtors.

CAR's 2009 California Housing Market Forecast, to be released Thursday, predicts that California's median price will fall 6 percent next year to $358,000 compared with a projected median of $381,000 for this year.

Sales for 2009 are projected to increase 12.5 percent to 445,000 units, compared with 395,600 units (projected) in 2008.

Robert Kleinhenz, CAR's deputy chief economist, said those projections weren't exactly unexpected.

"Having observed the way the housing cycle has behaved in the past, in both the 80s and 90s, this is not surprising," he said. "The nice thing is that we've already turned the corner in terms of sales activity. The real question is when prices will turn around."

CAR's forecast is being presented today during the California Realtor Expo at Long Beach Convention Center.

"If anything has been surprising over the past year it's been the fact that California's median has fallen, not just rapidly, but by such significant margins," Kleinhenz said. "It's totally unprecedented. We've never seen double-digit, year-over-year decreases like this."

Industry experts and sideline observers have long speculated as to when the nation's floundering housing market will hit bottom. Many voiced their views in a story we ran in Sunday's paper.

If figures released Thursday by the Commerce Department are any indication, we still have a way to go. In fact, new home sales tumbled in August to the slowest pace in 17 years, while the average sales price fell by the largest amount on record, demonstrating the depth of the problem that Washington is trying to solve. 

For more on this, read on.