The Lawhead Team would like to share November’s home sales statistics for California. Stay tuned for December’s coming shortly also! If you are thinking of selling, now is the time!!

Inventory was at the lowest level it has been in California in over 16 years! There is 1.9 months of supply.

A home, in November, stayed on the market for 9.0 days on average. This is a record low time for homes to stay on the market.

Sales to list price ratio was 100.5% – the highest record in the last 30 years!

Home sales reached the highest number in 15 years. California existing single-family home sales reached an average of $508,820. The year to year growth for California existing single-family home sales went up 26.3%.

California existing single-family home median price as of the end of November 2020 is $699,000.

Call The Lawhead Team to find out what your home is worth, Because Two Lawheads Are Better Than One!

Check out California’s Sales and Price Report for March.

The Lawhead Team would like to share the latest One Cool Thing from California Association of Realtors about March’s Sales and Price report:

Sales were down moderately because of the effect of COVID-19.

373,070 single family homes sold in California in March, which is 6.1% down from March of 2019. The median home price is $612,440 which is actually 8.3% up from March of 2019.

Unfortunately pending sales suggest a sharper decline in April for California. We are still waiting to see what April’s numbers are and will share them when we receive them!

The Lawhead Team would like to share the latest “One Cool Thing” to let you know where the hottest markets in California real estate are happening. 

It’s Hot, Hot, Hot in California

Of the 20 hottest U.S. real estate markets identified in a new survey by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS, more than half were in California:

1. San Francisco, CA
2. Dallas, TX
3. Denver, CO
4. Vallejo, CA
5. Santa Rosa, CA
6. San Jose, CA
7. San Diego, CA
8. Midland, TX
9. Sacramento, CA
10. Columbus, OH
11. Ann Arbor, MI
12. Santa Cruz, CA
13. Detroit, MI
14. Los Angeles, CA
15. Oxnard, CA
16. Stockton, CA
17. Yuba City, CA
18. Austin, TX
19. San Antonio, TX
20. Nashville, TN

These markets receive 1.8 to 3 times the number of views per listing compared to the national average. They are also seeing inventory move 29 to 48 days more quickly than the rest of the U.S.

Source: Realtor.com

The Lawhead Team would like to share the latest “One Cool Thing” from California Association of Realtors® about going from renting a home to buying a home:

The majority of renters who plan to purchase a home soon don’t expect to move far when they do. More than half will stay in the same county, if not the same neighborhood.

So, where will they live?

• 41% of new home buyers will live in the same county they currently reside.
• 23% don’t know where their home they buy will be.
• 14% will buy a home in the same neighborhood as their current rental residence.
• 11% will live in another county in California.
• 10% will move to another state to buy their home.
• 1% will buy a home in another country.

Do renters plan to use a REALTOR® when they buy a home?

• 56% said YES
• 36% said they don’t know
• 8% said NO

The Lawhead Team recently came across an interesting article from the San Diego Daily Transcript about Chinese buyers being attracted to homes in California. Here is what it said:

Chinese investors seek California homes.

By DEAN CALBREATH, The Daily Transcript — Thursday, June 19, 2014

With China’s real estate bubble showing signs of bursting, a growing number of wealthy Chinese are targeting California as a place to buy homes and businesses, according to a report released Thursday by the UCLA Anderson Forecast.

Last year, Chinese individuals and enterprises invested $12.5 billion in the United States, including $2.2 billion in real estate, with California being the “preferred investment location,” wrote William Yu, a Taiwan-born economist at UCLA.

“We have seen many smart Chinese investors bring in cash to buy properties in Los Angeles over the past two years…,” Yu said. “For Chinese investors, West Coast cities (including) Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle are ideal locations because of their geographic advantage, for example, direct flights, mild weather and large Asian communities.”

Yu’s charts also suggested that San Diego could be an attractive target because of its relatively low multifamily housing vacancy rates, which “might predict higher growth for rents in the future.”

The reason for the recent influx of Chinese investments — which totaled just $3.5 billion two years ago, including $900 million in real estate — is that China currently has a real estate bubble that rivals Japan in 1990 and the U.S. in 2007.

Its ratio between home prices and income levels is three times wider than in the U.S., resulting in growing vacancy rates.

Because of Chinese prices are still at bubble levels, it’s far cheaper to buy property in California than in a Chinese urban center such as Shanghai. And because California has a higher median income than Chinese cities, it’s easier to charge high rents on the property.

As an example, Yu cited a 1,248-square-foot condominium that sold for $995,184 in Shanghai in March, or $797 per square foot. Yet a 2,116-square-foot condominium sold in Los Angeles for $800,000, or $392 per square foot. In other words, the L.A. flat was 41 percent bigger but 19 percent cheaper.

Because Los Angeles has a higher median income, it would be possible for the buyer of the condominium to rent it out at $3,000 per month, more than twice as high as the $1,400 monthly rent it would bring in China.

Click here to read the rest of the article from the San Diego Daily Transcript “Chinese investors seek California homes.”

The Lawhead Team recently came across an interesting article from Forbe’s about the many reasons California’s real estate continues to stay priced high:

Playing The Surge In California Real Estate

From Forbles.com (Ross Gerber, Contributor)

On its face, the real estate environment seems like it’s in good shape. Not only are prices back up to – and in many cases eclipsing – pre-crash levels, but the number of foreclosures and underwater homeowners has fallen dramatically, especially in some of the harder hit areas around the country. Beneath the surface, however, danger is lurking as prospective buyers nationwide are finding it more and more challenging to find affordable housing.

Along the California coast, it’s not merely challenging to find reasonably priced real estate – it’s nearly impossible. From San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco, home values are rapidly rising and a confluence of factors will likely continue to drive the market even higher. Consider the following:

**Prop 13 – A voter initiative passed in 1978 amid an anti-tax revolt, it caps California property tax rates at 1.25% and freezes assessed property values at the original purchase price. While no one likes higher taxes, the measure artificially constrains inventory and make prices soar because it offers older homeowners a remarkable disincentive to sell.

**Greater investment property ownership – Investors flooded the middle market after real estate hit bottom during the financial crisis, gobbling up foreclosures and short sales at bargain basement prices and converting them into rentals – further squeezing what little affordable inventory exists within these markets.

**Lack of available land – In the most desirable neighborhoods within San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, land is scarce. And when there is development in such neighborhoods, it often involves tearing down a $1 million home and replacing it with one that is three times more expensive. While this is good for surrounding homeowners – who see the value of their properties go up – it makes the broader market more challenging for prospective buyers.

**Foreign buyers inflating prices – From locating a property to negotiating price to going through each exhaustive step of the mortgage process, buying a home often takes months. But for wealthy foreign buyers seeking the safe haven of US-based hard assets, and making all-cash offers to sweeten their deals, it only takes weeks.  And by frequently going above market prices in their offers, foreign buyers have helped drive up the price for everyone else.

Click here to continue reading about California’s real estate.

The Lawhead Team would like to share below an article from Forbes about the top overpriced cities in America. Is it any surprise California contains almost half of them?

Excerpts from “America’s Most Overpriced Cities” can be found at Forbe’s website.

To find the Most Overpriced cities, we started with America’s 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and Metropolitan Divisions (MDs), all with populations of 600,000 or more. MSAs and MDs are cities and their surrounding suburbs as defined by the Office of Management and Budget.

Not surprisingly, California has the greatest number of overpriced cities on our list (nine), with San Jose the highest-ranking Golden State metro area (No. 4). In the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA, according to NAHB figures, only 26% of homes are affordable to families bringing home the median income of $101,300. (The median home sales price was $625,000 in Q4 2013.) “In areas in California where salaries are high, demand is high, and building activity is restricted, prices are high,” says Cynthia Kroll, chief economist for the Bay Area Association of Governments.

Housing affordability is even worse in San Jose’s northern neighbor, San Francisco, where the median family making $101,200 can afford only 14.1% of local homes (median sales price for Q14 2013: $800,000) according to NAHB data. In fact, that ranks San Francisco dead last in terms of housing affordability among the cities we evaluated for this list. The only reason San Francisco comes out less overpriced than Silicon Valley is that greater San Jose’s lower home prices were offset with higher costs for daily expenses. Groceries are 20% above the national average (compared to SF’s 16.2%), utilities 24.2% (compared to 7.6% lower than the national average in San Francisco); Silicon Valley also has a slight advantages in transportation and health care costs. But we’ll admit that the difference in our scores for these places is fairly minimal.

Read entire article on America’s Most Overpriced Cities by clicking on the link.

The Lawhead Team would like to share an Infograph on the latest reasons those in California are buying homes.

Most Californians bought in 2013 mainly because of low home prices. Just in 2013 alone, 38% of those in California bought primarily because of price reductions. While we have started to see a gradual increase in home prices, overall home prices since the last crash a few years ago are still very low.

Next up for California home buyers was the favorable financing that has been available. FHA loans allow a home buyer to purchase a home with only 3% down. Low entry cost combined with low housing prices tempted many Californians to make their home purchase this year.

We all want a better life and living situation. Well, 10% of those in California bought their homes in 2013 because they desired a better or new location. And why not? With housing prices still low and unusually low mortgage rates, 2013 made it the best time to upgrade your home for a lower cost than normal.

If you were in the housing market this year in California, you most likely experienced the bidding wars associated with putting offers in on various homes. In 2013, 9% of California dwellers bought a home for an investment and/or tax advantage.

Lastly, 7% of those in California bought a home because they were tired of renting. And rightly so, it probably cost less to own a home on a monthly basis than to rent based on 2013’s low housing cost and low mortgage rates.

On Thursday, federal and state officials announced a $26 billion foreclosure settlement mortgage deal with five of the largest home lenders.

California is expected to receive approximately $12 billion in principal write-downs, including through short sales, over the next three years, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Making sense of the story

• The deal settles potential state charges about allegations of improper foreclosures based on robo-signing, seizures made without proper paperwork.
• The settlement sets up a federal monitor to oversee the process and try to prevent the challenges that tripped up many homeowners seeking help in earlier programs designed to address the housing crisis.
• Most of the relief will go to those who are underwater on their homes.  That relief will come over the course of the next three years, with banks having incentives to provide most of the relief in the next 12 months.
• At least $17 billion will go to reducing the principal owed by homeowners who are underwater and behind on their mortgages.
• Up to 750,000 other underwater homeowners who are current on their mortgages will be able to refinance their current loans at lower rates.  They will not receive a reduction in principal, but with mortgage rates near record lows, they could receive substantial savings on their monthly payments.
• Approximately $1.5 billion will go to homeowners who had their homes foreclosed upon between Jan. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2011, and who meet other criteria.  They will receive up to $2,000 each.
• The five mortgage servicers that are parties to the settlement include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC)

Source: California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.).