With all the doom and gloom in the news on housing, some perspective is in order if only to show our local situation in the San Fernando Valley area and how it relates to you!

Local San Fernando Valley Housing Data

In a sign that the local housing marketing is beginning to rebound, sales in the San Fernando Valley of existing single-family homes increased during April and posted the first year-to-year gain in 30 months, as reported by the Southland Regional Association of Realtors. Not since September 2005 has the monthly total been higher than the prior year. The 547 sales closed by Realtors during April was up dramatically compared to April 2007 - 100 transactions or 22.4 percent higher. The April total also was 31.5 percent above March and has climbed each month since January, gaining momentum as the traditional Spring home buying season gets underway and as lenders start writing loans again. There’s plenty of pent-up demand for homes as lenders slowly resume making affordable loans. Single-family home prices hit the record high of $655,000 in June of last year but have been inching lower at a much slower pace than condos. Last month the median came in at $465,000, down 25.6 percent from the prior year and off 1.1 percent from March. That was only the second time in this cycle that the price decline was above 20 percent. At the current pace of sales, the inventory represents a 10.4-month supply, clearly a buyers’ market, but significantly lower than the 15- and 16-month supply of recent months or the record high 23-month supply set in February 1993. During the height of the recent sellers’ market, inventory frequently dipped below a 1-month supply. A balanced market appears around the 5- to 6-month range. More people can afford to buy a median priced home today than at any point in a decade, with one-third of families in Los Angeles County now earning enough to purchase an entry-level home. Pending escrows – a measure of future resale activity – suggest that April’s strong sales numbers likely will continue into summer. Open escrows, totaling 1,082 transaction, were down a modest 4.7 percent from a year ago, but increased on a month-to-month basis by 21.2 percent. April marked the first time in a year that the pending escrow total rose above the 1,000 benchmark.