Real Estate News for Monday, February 6th, 2006

Real estate rates approach 4-year highs. Market faces impact of Treasury bond auction. Rates up again. The 10-year T-note on Friday was 4.6 percent, up .25 percent in two weeks, the driver behind the rise in mortgages from just above 6 percent to just above 6.25 percent. Click here to read more.

Real Estate Trends by Caroll Yule. Initial deposits. All of you have heard the term "earnest money." As the name implies, this was money given to a seller when you were going to buy a home backing up your good intentions with cold, hard cash. These days the term used on the California Association Purchase Contract is "initial deposit" and there seems to be much confusion regarding this money. Click here to read more.

January Real Estate Activity Shows Mixed Results as Some Prices Drop and Market Time Increases, Says Kalman. January 2006 real estate activity struggled to stay even with month-earlier and January 2005 results in the North San Diego County communities of Fallbrook and Bonsall. January selling prices at $635,593 were nine percent lower than December, but the $296 per average square foot was seven percent higher. The current selling price of homes represents an average discount of almost nine percent off their original asking price. Entering February, 81 homes were in escrow carrying an average asking price of $766,032, or $307 per average square foot. Forty-five were put in escrow during January at an average asking price of $693,619, or $297 per average square foot. On February 1, 305 homes were on the market with an average listing price of $931,461, or $337 per square foot, both figures roughly equal to those in December. Four condos closed escrow in January, two in each community. The average selling price per square foot was back up to $270. The average price of the 27 condos on the market rose 13 percent to $409,121. Almost two thirds of the available inventory is in Bonsall. Click here to read more.

Home-buying industry busy wooing Latinos. Savvy real estate professionals are capitalizing on what they see as a huge market of first-time home buyers among Latinos, who make up the fastest-growing minority group in the United States. Forty million Latinos live in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 figures, and 30 percent of them are in California. Nearly 1 million Latinos make San Diego County their home, and real estate agents, brokers and lenders are busy pursuing them. Click here to read more.

Default Notices Hitting Home. Foreclosure activity in California increased an annual 15.6% in last year's fourth quarter, partly in response to lower appreciation rates and is further proof that the hot housing market is cooling, an industry tracker said. During 2005's final three months mortgage lenders papered 14,999 California home owners behind in their payments with default notices, the first step in the foreclosure process, said La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems. In Southern California 8,912 homeowners received default notices, up 19.6% from the same period last year, while 3,480 Los Angeles County residents received them, up 10.7% from the last quarter of 2004. The residential real estate market had been so hot that DataQuick stopped issuing foreclosure activity reports for a while. Still, California foreclosures are nowhere near their peak of 59,897, reached in the first quarter of 1996. The state's foreclosure activity bottomed during the third quarter of 2004 when just 12,145 default notices were issued. DataQuick's default statistics go back to 1992. Los Angeles activity also peaked in the first three months of 1996 when 21,444 notices were issued. The bottom also came in the third quarter of 2004 when 2,696 default notices were issued. Click here to read more.

~Tina Jan~
Coldwell Banker Kivett-Teeters
1655 E. Sixth St.
Beaumont, CA 92223
Work: 951-845-5520 Ext. 105
Fax: 951-845-4916
Cell: 909-446-2666
Toll-Free: 1-877-TINAJAN
tina.jan@coldwellbanker.com
www.tinajan.com