Real Estate News for Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Sales of homes cool in October. Experts say local housing market hasn't bottomed out yet. California's residential real estate market cooled dramatically in October with prices falling below the year-ago level in a majority of major markets and sales posting the weakest total for the month in 18 years. Last month, statewide sales of previously owned homes fell 28.7 percent and the median price rose 2 percent. But it declined in 14 of the 20 major markets tracked by the Los Angeles-based group. And in seven markets, including Orange and San Diego counties, the median price has fallen below its year-ago point for three consecutive months. If sales proceeded at October's pace all year, 443,320 properties would change hands. That's the smallest annualized rate for the month since 478,770 projected sales in October 1988. Sales have now been at their current level for three months. "The market is still in a decline. Most people don't look for it to really bottom out until late 2007," said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Source.

Agassi, Graf sell their Tiburon estate for $20 million. Retired tennis stars Andre Agassi and wife, Steffi Graf, have agreed to unload their 13,000-square-foot Tiburon estate for $20 million - $3 million less than they paid for it five years ago. The residential sale amount is the second-highest in Marin history. The first was when Agassi purchased it in 2001 for $23 million. Agassi's original asking price was $24.5 million. The couple - who live primarily in Las Vegas - are selling their home to Marin resident Stuart Peterson, the head of Arts Capital Management, a California hedge fund that invested in the Web video site YouTube before it was purchased this year by Google. Source.

Going it alone. More single women buying their own home. Percentage of female home buyers reaches record high of 22 percent. From July 2005 to June 2006, unattached women made up 22 percent of all home buyers--a record high. During the same time period in 1995, 14 percent of home purchases were made by single women. Cultural and societal progress have contributed to the growth of female investment. In the 1970s "women had a hard time getting a credit card much less a mortgage," said NAR spokesman Walter Molony. "They were not being taken seriously by the lending community." But higher education and workplace advancements among women have led more of them to enter the real-estate market. "The biggest change in household composition over time has been in women buyers," Molony said. The percentage of female homeowners reached double digits during the 1990s when the Federal Housing Administration allowed women to count child support as income. "It made a real difference for single mothers," Molony said. "That accounted, presumably, for the increases we saw in the 1990s." Financial education has also given women the confidence to purchase a home on their own. According to the NAR report, women are also buying property at a faster rate than single men, who made up 9 percent of all home sales. This could be because "women kind of have a nesting instinct and understand the value of housing as an investment," Molony suggested. "Men, when they're young and single, aren't." Source.

~Tina Jan~
Coldwell Banker Kivett-Teeters
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