SANTA MONICA REAL ESTATE SNAPSHOT – APRIL 2010

By Jodi Summers

The stimulus package must be working. Southern California home sales are up for the 20th month in a row as buyers continued to snap up bargain properties. Locally in Santa Monica, comparing March 2008 to March 2010, the median price of for sale properties is down 10% and the median price of sold properties is down 31%.

The sales distribution is still slanted toward lower-cost distressed homes, although not as steeply as most of last year.

“It’s possible the stars won’t line up this way again for many years. With prices and mortgage interest rates this low, the cost of ownership is about as low as we’ve seen it in decades,” observed John Walsh, MDA DataQuick president.

Savvy buyers have been taking advantage of the current conditions. Locally the number ofis up 143% from two years ago...

While the number of sold properties is up 38%, according to Clarus Market Metrics.

The median price paid for a Southland home was $275,000 last month, up 1.3% from $271,500 in January, and up 10.0% from $250,000 for February 2009. In Santa Monica, the sale price of a single family residence averaged $795,000 a drop of -8.36% from a year ago, when the average home price was $867,500. DQ News reports that prices bottomed out in April 2009.

“The market is less lopsided, but before a real rebalancing occurs adjustable-rate and jumbo mortgages need to come back. Not to where they were in 2007, but back to where they were a few years before that,” Walsh said.

While 44.8% of all Southland purchase mortgages since 2000 have been adjustable-rate (ARMs), it was 4.0% last month, down from 4.3% in January and up from 2.1% in February last year. Foreclosure resales accounted for 42.3% of the resale market last month, up from 42.1% in January, and down from 56.7% a year ago, which was the all-time high. That promised next wave of distressed properties has yet to appear, thanks, in part to the government’s efforts to divert foreclosures.

Government-insured FHA loans, a popular choice among first-time buyers, accounted for 38.5% of all home purchase loans in February. Investors bought 18.9% of the homes sold in February. All-cash buyers accounted for 29.3% of February sales.

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