Crabtree housing report: Numbers point to strengthening market
| Thursday, Jan 05 2012 04:33 PM
Last Updated Friday, Jan 20 2012 03:56 PM
Home sales in the Bakersfield area were slow in December, which is typical during the holiday season, but there are still signs that bode well for the long-term health of the housing market, according to the Preliminary Crabtree Report, a monthly gauge of the local housing market prepared by Affiliated Appraisers.
The median sale price for existing single-family homes in the Bakersfield area was $132,000 in December, down 1.5 percent from November but up 5.6 percent over $125,000 in December 2010.
December "saw some typical changes that are associated with the off-peak marketing season, such as demand and price declines," appraiser Gary Crabtree wrote.
But supply is declining and demand is getting better, which means the fallout from the housing market crash is slowly diminishing.
The supply of active listings of homes for sale dropped 9.3 percent to 922 from November to December, excluding contingent offers on short sales that are not yet approved by the bank.
A short sale is an agreement between a lender and a seller to sell a home for less than the balance of the mortgage.
Closed sales -- an indicator of demand -- are still down but not by much. They dipped 5.7 percent to 545 for the month and dropped 11.4 percent for the year.
At the same time, pending sales -- or future demand -- rose 4.7 percent to 420 for the month, a 20.3 percent increase year-over-year.
Foreclosures continue to be a problem, though. They rose 23 percent to 400 from November to December, but fell 3.8 percent from December 2010.
That figure is likely to rise even more in January because lenders generally put the breaks on foreclosures during the holidays and resume in earnest after that.
But on a more positive note, sales of properties owned by lenders accounted for 34.1 percent of home sales last month, compared with December 2010 when half of all sales involved homes that had been foreclosed.
Taken all together, those numbers point to a strengthening market that "will start to drive prices up," provided the inventory of lender-owned homes can be kept in check, Crabtree wrote.
