Real Estate News for Tuesday, December 13th, 2005

Housing Costs Lifting Rentals Out of Reach. The cost of rental housing has increased faster than wages, making it increasingly difficult for low-income families to afford even modest apartments, an advocacy group said Tuesday. Hawaii is the state with the most expensive rental costs, followed by California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. California also had eight of the 10 most expensive counties for rental housing, led by Marin County, near San Francisco. West Virginia had the most affordable rents, followed by Arkansas, North Dakota, Alabama and Mississippi. Click here to read more.

Here's some real estate news for Oregon.
Housing prices still on the rise. The median sale price is up 31 percent, but there are more homes on the market. An increase in houses for sale in Jackson County seems to have slowed the bidding frenzy that characterized the real estate market a year ago. But that hasn’t slowed the ever-rising tide of prices. Statistics for November 2004 to November 2005 show the number of single-family residences (including townhouses) for sale rising from 661 to 1,109, an increase of 68 percent. At the same time, there were just 186 transactions reported in November, compared to 288 in the corresponding period in 2004. But that 35 percent drop in activity didn’t stop median sales prices from climbing 31 percent, to $294,000. The median price represents the mid-range in sales, with an equal number of houses selling for more and less than that price. Click here to read more.

Solano residents spending more for their housing. More Solano County residents own their own home than others statewide, but they're also spending more of their income to live in them, a new study shows. Despite higher income levels and lower poverty levels, more Solano County residents spend a larger percentage of their incomes on housing than people do in the rest of the Bay Area or the state as a whole. This may indicate more Solano County families are struggling to get by, and many minimum wage workers can't afford to rent here, let alone buy a home, he said. Housing is out of reach for minimum wage workers in Solano County. This is even more true elsewhere in the Bay Area, but it's worse in Solano County than outside the Bay Area. Seven out of 10 Solano County households own their own home compared to three out of five statewide. But one way Solano County families are making that happen is by spending more of their income on housing. Click here to read more.

Plan would expand solar energy use. State energy officials, seeking to revive a key element of the Schwarzenegger administration's push to expand renewable energy use, on Monday outlined a plan to increase annual spending on new solar energy units to nearly $300 million. The plan, set for formal release today, would shuffle programs among state agencies in order to revive the administration's high-profile program to build 1 million homes with units to make electricity from the sun. Click here to read more.

~Tina Jan~
Coldwell Banker Kivett-Teeters
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