Home prices still falling, but getting better

[alp227]

Source: Robert Selna, San Francisco Chronicle

(02-23) 14:26 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Extremely modest home price declines nationally and locally in the fourth quarter might presage continued small price decreases or a flat market for one to five years to come, but there are more questions than answers about where residential real estate will go from here, according to experts analyzing recent data from an authoritative housing study.

In 20 cities and nine census divisions across the United States, prices fell just 1.1 percent from the third to the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the Case-Shiller/S&P Home Price Index. And, while prices declined nationally by 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the fourth quarter of 2008, that change was an improvement from previous year-over year comparisons.

The San Francisco metropolitan area fared better than most of the nation, seeing nearly a 5 percent home price increase in December compared to the same month in 2008. But local prices stayed essentially flat from October to December 2009, meaning that price momentum generated during 2009 began to stall in the year's later months.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/23/BUS81C5UD5.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

[county worker]

1. One thing keeping selling prices up are the lenders who will not accept certain bids

on short sales. They would rather foreclose than take a lower price. If you want to buy a house that is in a short sale position the lender determines what it will sell for. Here they are asking market value or higher. The first offer is usually less than that and someone else will offer the asking price and someone else will offer more. The lender is waiting for the highest offer and the home owner has to wait and can get foreclosed on while the lender waits for the right offer to come in. There are a lot of short sale houses in our town.