Real Estate News for Wednesday, April 19th, 2006

Home Sales Continue to Decline: Transactions in the Southland drop for the fourth straight month in March. The median price rises year over year. The median price paid for a home in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura and San Diego counties rose 14%, to a record $501,000, from a year earlier and was up 4.4% from February. The number of homes changing hands in the region fell 9.7% on a year-over-year basis to 29,905. It was the fourth consecutive month that sales volume fell, further evidence that the region's once-robust housing market has shifted into lower gear. Sales activity and price increases reached a peak about two years ago. Both have been ticking down on a year-over-year basis since. Experts call that a return to more typical market conditions. About 50% more homes are on the market than a year ago, and they are typically taking longer to sell — from an average of 27 days a year ago to about 48 today. But "homes priced right" are being snapped up, even as mortgage rates have ticked higher, he said. Not surprisingly, the biggest annual percentage increase in March occurred in San Bernardino County, where the median-priced home rose 23.2% to $367,000, the lowest in the region. Riverside was the only county to record an increase in sales, which rose 6% as the median gained 9% to a record $413,000. Click here to read more.

Housing Starts Decline 7.8% as Interest Rates, Inventories Rise. U.S. builders started work on the fewest houses in a year in March as rising mortgage rates and record inventories of unsold homes discouraged new projects. Housing starts declined 7.8%, more than economists had expected, to an annual rate of 1.96 million, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. The figures suggested that the Federal Reserve's strategy of raising interest rates in quarter-point intervals is guiding the economy to a slower pace of growth and keeping inflation under control. Click here to read more.

Booming economy driving up rents in Inland Empire. Apartment rents are increasing more rapidly in many of the West's major markets, and the Inland region is near the top of the curve, according to statistics being released today. The average apartment rent in March rose by at least 4 percent in nine of the 20 Western markets surveyed by RealFacts, a Novato-based real-estate research firm. Rents increased 7.3 percent in the two-county Inland region between the first quarter of 2005 and first quarter of 2006, up from a growth rate of 6.2 percent the previous year. Chris Bates, who directed the research project for RealFacts, said rent increases in the Inland Empire last year were the largest of any area within the 15 states in the West and Southwest that RealFacts surveys. He attributed that in part to the Inland region's healthy economy and rising interest rates that prevent more people from buying homes. Also he noted that the Inland Empire's apartment stock is relatively new and its new apartment communities tend to be aimed at a luxury market. Bates said nonetheless the Inland Empire's average rent of $1,097 is not extraordinarily high, ranking only 10th among the 22 metropolitan markets in California that RealFacts monitors. 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