Crabtree Report: Housing data show 'trend toward some kind of a mend'
| Tuesday, Dec 06 2011 04:33 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, Dec 06 2011 04:35 PM
The Bakersfield housing market showed surprising strength last month, a time of year when sales are usually sluggish.
That's according to the Preliminary Crabtree Report, a monthly gauge of the local housing market prepared by Gary Crabtree of Affiliated Appraisers.
"It looks like we might be starting to trend toward some kind of a mend," Crabtree said in an interview Tuesday. "The numbers are very encouraging."
That is, of course, provided there isn't a flood of houses from the so-called shadow inventory of foreclosed homes that lenders have yet to put up for sale.
Sales usually dip going into the holiday season. Few people want to move when most others are engaged in seasonal festivities.
Yet closed sales, a measure of local demand, managed to rise 5.4 percent to 546 from October to November, according to the report. That was a 1.9 percent increase over November of last year.
Pending sales, an indicator of future demand, were up, too. For the month, they jumped 15.5 percent to 463, which was a 32.6 percent increase over a year earlier.
The median sale price of single-family houses in the Bakersfield area was $131,500 in November, down 1.5 percent from October but up a slight 1.1 percent from a year earlier.
Crabtree said prices were held down by the number of lender-owned properties on the market, which hit a new low with a median sale price of $94,900.
Foreclosure activity tends to go on hold over the holiday season, too, so it's not surprising that foreclosures fell 20.3 percent to 325 for the month, Crabtree said. Still, that was a 12.9 percent decline for the year.
Strengthening demand and falling unsold inventory (down 11.4 percent for the month) combined with the slow but steady erosion of lender-owned properties in the market all point to a healthier market that eventually will push up prices, Crabtree said.
Lender-owned properties accounted for 33.4 percent of sales in November, down from 47.8 percent at the same time last year.
