Friday, March 26, 2010

Current Real Estate Market Conditions

Here is your Real Estate Market update for the San Francisco Bay area. This article will speak mainly of the South Bay, North Bay and Southern Alameda Counties which are the counties that are making the most notable recoveries in housing prices.

Inventory is down almost 50% over this time last year. Believe it or not we are actually in a Seller's Market at this time. Hard to believe, huh?

With so much bad press about the housing market for the last two years it is hard to believe that things have changed so much so let me explain what is driving or pushing this. First, most of the press we see on the "housing problem" is based on national figures and the rest of California is included in that. However in the Bay Area we have a different situation. We have a lot of areas that are "landlocked" due to the proximity of mountains and the San Fransisco Bay "locking" areas in from any further housing growth. We also have certain demographic cultural ideologies that cause those demographics to buy and rarely sell. For example for at least 7 years the city of San Jose has not had an ethnic majority. In other words no one ethnic group comprises 50% or more of the population in the City of San Jose. Interesting, huh?

So when you have certain ethnic cultures in an area and they buy and rarely sell, then that substantially stablizes that housing market and causes values to go up.

Geoffrey Gault,
Real Estate Market Watch
www.geoffreygaultrealestate.com

Market Update-26 march-10

25 March 2010

Here's today's market update. Yesterday in tandem with the Fed, the Treasury announced the cutback in purchasing mortgage backed securities. This immediately caused Mortgage Interest rates to spike up. To the tune of about one half a percent in costs. What that means is: for every $100,000 borrowed it will cost the consumer $500 more in one time costs (points we say in this business) to do the loan.

Their actions were justified by stating that the economy is showing signs of recovery and "we want to get back to normalization regarding this area of capitol infusion." "It is time the market gets the message that they will not be here to continuously prop up the mortgage markets."

The Fed however reiterated their position of not raising the Fed rate until there are clearer signs that the economy is in a full recovery and they see no interest rate increases in the foreseeable future.

Well it looks like the baby is being weened off the bottle. As long as they do not starve the baby that's a good thing. I think its funny that basically the Fed and international bankers created this current financial problem by easing lending standards to the point that anyone could borrow money to buy a house and now we, the tax payers are paying for it.

Geoffrey Gault, Mortgage Market Watch
www.geoffreygaultrealestate.com

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Home Buyers Tax Credit for California

Well everyone, we have great news for those of you who own, or are looking at owning, real estate in California.

Governor Schwarzenegger is on a tour right now through California to promote his new Home Buyer Tax Credit proposal.

According to the Governor on Monday, he was promoting to our legislature to not only extend the current $10,000 state tax credit (which applies to the purchase of new homes only) but to include anyone who buys a home, not just a new home or first-time home buyer.

In essence the Governor is saying, "We want to encourage everyone, including the move-up buyer, to purchase a home in California. And the State of California will give you a $10,000 tax credit to do that."

Hasta la vista baby!


Geoffrey Gault
, Broker
The William Jefferies Co.
Automated Mortgage Investment
http://www.geoffreygaultrealestate.com
1630 Oakland Rd. A109
San Jose CA. 95132
cell 408 202-2089
Office 408 573-0811