October 2011 Homes Sales in California
Okay, so it's time once again to get 'the bigger' picture. These statistics and figures are obtained from DQ News, a real estate data capturer and are really accurate.
According to the DQ News Article, home sales in California for the month of October 2011 were down 3.7% from September and up 4.3% from last October. so overall, this points to an upswing in home sales over the year.
The median price for a home went down to $240,000 from $249,000 in September which is a 3.6% decrease in value in just a month. Last October the median price was $256,000 in October of 2010. The home values in California have been consistently dropping every month for the last 13 months. Interestingly the bottom value was $221,000 in April, 2009 while the peak for this cycle was $484,000 in early 2007.
Distressed Properties (short sales and foreclosures) continue to make up over half our the current home sales in California. Of the existing homes sold last month 34.1% were foreclosures. This figure was up from September but down from last year. The all time high was in Feburary 2009 and was 58.8%. As for short sales, they made up 19.5% of the existing home sales in October.
Buyers are committing to lower and lower mortgage payments as time goes on. The average payment was $924 which is much lower ( I can attest) than the mortgage payments which were being handled early on in this housing bubble. In fact, the $924 is the lowest mortgage payment on record and down 58% from the spring peak of 1989and 66% lower than the current cycles peak in June of 2006.
If you are interested in buying or selling or simply have questions about real estate, please feel free to contact me. I will be more than happy to assist you!
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