SoCal Housing Articles

For the Kingman realtors that think Kingman houses will gain value and/or stay at the current values, perhaps they should check out the SoCal market. Many areas of Socal are already less expensive than Mohave County and have further to fall.

http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_7981286
I.E. home sales tumble
By Michael Rappaport, Staff Writer
Article Created: 01/15/2008 06:57:15 PM PST

December usually isn't a bad month for home sales, but December 2007 was one for the books.

According to Tuesday's monthly report from DataQuick Information Systems of La Jolla, only 13,240 new and resale homes and condominiums were sold in Southern California last month, the worst December on record by a wide margin.

Nearly 24 percent fewer homes sold last month than in December 1990, the previous worst.

The median price of a home in Southern California has dropped from $490,000 to $425,000 in the last year, with every one of the six counties in the region down by more than 10 percent.

San Bernardino County's off 14.9percent to $315,000
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http://www.pe.com/business/local/stories/PE_News_Local_B_dataquick16.3537580.html

Region's housing market stays in 'midst of turbulence'
10:00 PM PST on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
By JACK KATZANEKThe Press-Enterprise

Home prices in Inland Southern California continued to fall in December, and sales numbers in Riverside and San Bernardino counties are down about 50 percent from where they were a year ago, DataQuick Information Systems reported.

The record highs were $432,000 in Riverside County and $380,000 in San Bernardino County, both set about a year ago. Five years ago, the median home in the Inland area sold for about $200,000.

And this statement from the article says it all:

Esmael Adibi, chief economist for Chapman University, said mortgage rates are looking favorable right now, but prices won't start to rebound until the buyers come back to the table. Right now, Adibi said, most are not earning enough money to qualify.

And that is the problem, prices got out of control everywhere and it wasn't a problem because no one was required to qualify for the loans. Now that banks are starting to act responsibly, prices will have to drop to a price that is affordable to buyers.