Foreclosures make home ownership possible for more

Reporter Kevin Smith has a solid article earlier this week about how the wave of foreclosures are leading to more sales as prices begin to drop. I think that means the time to buy is now, as the increased sales could stop the plummeting home prices.

Or, if more and more people keep defaulting, it could mean that it will matter little because so many more houses will come on the market.

Btw, I also came across a study today on the affordability of housing- 48 percent of Californians can now afford to buy a home, according to the California Association of Realtors, compared to 24 percent at this time last year.

That means, of course, that based on their income a lot more people of moderate and low income can now afford a crushingly expensive loan that would give them the lowest-priced homes in the state (average entry-priced home in California $329,120, according to study), since so many of those homes have lost so much value. Yay?

Also, many of the homes are also concentrated in areas like the Inland Empire that have been devastated by foreclosures, so in many areas, a lot of new lower-priced homes don't exist. In the Inland Empire, 60 percent of people can now afford homes, compared to 37 percent last year. In L.A. County, 39 percent can, compared to 20 percent last year. I suspect the SGV's numbers are somewhere between those, since the foreclosure mess has done virtually nothing to Westside Los Angeles prices, and some of the furthest east neighborhoods in the SGV do have a high number of new homes, similar to the Inland Empire.