Looking for Rays of Sunshine

What a beautiful Alameda Sunday and today is shaping up to be even a nicer day, I’m positive reading about local real estate is not high on your list of things to do today, so I will try to keep it short. In today’s post we also have a video of the seven foreclosed homes listed on the MLS, I did not included condos in the video, also at the bottom is the weekly inventory report.

Before we get to those two regular items I wanted to drop a quick note about the week. This is report week for all the National housing numbers and those in the industry are expecting to see little rays of light in the housing data. Economy-watchers are searching for signs or a little sunshine that the housing market has hit bottom in recent months and there is some early evidence that the meltdown may be over.

Three key pieces of housing-related data coming out: Existing and new home sales and Federal Housing Finance Agency's price index. Housing sales are expected to hit a bottom and may have already done so with incentives, rock bottom prices and interest rates.

Data on existing home sales in March is scheduled to come out Thursday and new home sales on Friday. Both measures of housing activity picked up in February, a sign that between cheap foreclosed-on houses and low mortgage rates, the volume of sales may finally have stopped falling. March is pivotal to understand how the start of the traditional buying season is getting started.

No matter the March numbers, there are good reasons to think that home sales will improve even though Alameda has continued to stay flat. While foreclosures are set to rise as banks begin to move on delinquent homeowners, that actually could boost home sales as banks auction homes for whatever the market will bear a flood of auction properties in the Bay Area sold over the weekend.

The numbers are slow to tell us what is happening, even if low rates and tax credits bring buyers back into the market, it could take months for that increased demand to meaningfully affect prices.

Alameda Foreclosures




Link to Larger Version




20-Apr-09

Total -- 162
94501 -- 125
94502 -- 36
SFR -- 91
Condo -- 42
Multi-Family -- 29
Short Sale -- 24
Foreclosure -- 11
Price Reductions -- 60
High List -- $ 2,345,000
Low List -- $ 199,900