Orange County coastal real estate for sale in Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach & Newport Coast

Below are excerpts from an OC Register article outlining some improvement in the Orange County housing market. It specifically indicates that the Newport Beach market has improved in the upper end of the spectrum.

SoCal sales shifting to pricier homes
January 19th, 2010, 2:22 pm · posted by Jeff Collins

Home sales in the region shifted to pricier areas last month, pushing December’s overall median home price up 4%, MDA DataQuick reported today.

* Relatively large annual sales gains were recorded last month in such higher-end markets as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Newport Beach — areas that saw very low sales a year ago.
* Some of the more affordable inland areas that saw robust 2008 sales recorded year-over-year declines last month. Those markets included Moreno Valley, Lake Elsinore and Palmdale.
* Overall, the Southern California median home price increased to $289,000, the first annual price gain in about 2 1/2 years. It was the highest median sales price since October 2008.
* Prices rose in every county but Riverside and San Bernardino.
* Sales were up 12.1% to 22,328, the largest number for a December since 2006, DataQuick reported.
* Sales were up in every county in the region but Riverside.

What do you think?

Here are excerpts from the “California Economic Forecast” article by Mark Schniepp. It has the most uplifting outlook on the Southern California Housing market that has been published in a long time.

Following are some of the reasons that Mr. Scnhiepp outlines for the recovery to occur.

Expected Timeline for Recovery:
Southern California

• Home prices are stabilizing as foreclosures
  decline this year.
• Selling values will begin rising again, no less than
  one year following the end point (month) of the general
  recession in California.
• The general economic recovery in California will lag
  the nation by one quarter. Consequently, recovery occurs no later than the winter of 2010, with more convincing evidence by the spring of 2010.
• Home sales are rising now in Southern Santa Barbara
  County for condominiums and for lower priced single family homes. In the Santa Maria Valley, sales are soaring, largely due to fire-sale priced distressed homes. This is also true in the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley, and Northern Orange County.
• More broad-based participation by all price ranges of
  the housing market will occur in 2010, providing mortgage rates and credit market conditions remain favorable.
• The likelihood that mortgage rates will remain compet-
  ive into 2010 is high. The Federal Reserve will unlikely increase
  rates over the next 9 months, to insure that…

Here is an excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article that indicates a continued interest by the Warren Buffett organization in capturing good real estate investments now while the market is still down.

Berkshire, Leucadia Join to Acquire Capmark Assets (Update3)

By Andrew Frye and Pierre Paulden

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Leucadia National Corp. agreed to pay as much as $490 million for Capmark Financial Group Inc.’s loan-servicing and mortgage business in a bet on the U.S. real estate market.

The partnership of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire and New York-based Leucadia was paid $40 million by Capmark to enter into the agreement, the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based lender said today in a statement. The deal gives Capmark the right to sell the assets later to the venture, known as Berkadia III LLC. Capmark may file for bankruptcy after a $1.6 billion second- quarter loss, the lender said in a separate statement today.

Berkshire has been increasing investments in the U.S. real estate market, buying shares of banks including Wells Fargo & Co., the No. 1 U.S. mortgage lender this year. Yesterday, Berkshire’s real-estate brokerage unit announced it acquired a Chicago-based agency to expand in Illinois.

The Capmark deal “fits with the real estate brokerage they…

In attempting to figure out the direction of the housing market, one needs to consider strategies of the major real estate investors.  This article from CNBC.com News gives some insight into the thinking of a few major REIT fund investors, where they feel the real estate market is headed and when.

By: Jeff Cox, CNBC.com | 02 Jun 2009 | 02:27 PM ET

After taking a beating for the past two years, real estate investment trusts are regaining popularity with investors looking for bargains and a way to capitalize on an industry rebound.

More commonly known by their acronym, REITs are funds that provide investors with a broad range of investment opportunities while delivering substantial tax breaks to the corporations that set up the vehicles.

Wildly popular in the earlier part of the decade during the real estate boom, REITs nosedived in 2006 and 2007 as the market fell correspondingly.

But recent developments over the past several weeks have sharp-eyed investors again examining REITs as a way to profit from a looming rebound in the industry.

* REIT Stocks: Long and Short Strategies

And contrary to the growing trend of investors to eschew the traditional buy-and-hold stocks strategy, REITs are being looked at as long-term plays that will…

For the past several months clients have been coming through my frequent open houses in the Newport Heights community of Newport Beach asking the same question- how is the housing market doing in this area? I have been telling them that the premium properties along the coast have been holding their values far better than their inland counterparts. Here is an article from the California Real Estate Journal ( by Chris Hawkins, a bankruptcy attorney ) which outlines several reasons for the stability of this isolated market segment.

But I believe another factor is that the Southern California economy is doing better than many other regional economies around the country. Here are the reasons why I believe that to be the case.

Construction and real estate are hurting here, obviously (and my colleagues and I do see a lot of clients in these fields under financial stress). But other prominent sectors of the regional economy are picking up the slack and softening the blow.

Domestic tourism, although slightly down, is still holding steady in Southern California. Many Americans who used to fly overseas for vacation are staying home due to airline prices, currency valuations and security reasons – and they are now staying domestic,…

Anyone contemplating the purchase of a home in the Orange County coastal area may want to consider staying at one of the areas fine hotels for a few days to explore all that the community has to offer. The following article from the OCeanfront web-site outlines a little about the most luxurious of these hotels. In addition the OCeanfront web-site is an excellent place to learn about accommodations and resort activities in the Orange County coastal area.

TWO ELITE PROPERTIES ARE ADDED TO THE OCEANFRONT DESTINATION MARKETING ALLIANCE

The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel And The Resort at Pelican Hill To Participate In The Promotion Of Coastal Orange County

THE OCEANFRONT, ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. – The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel and the Resort at Pelican Hill (set to open in December of this year) recently joined The OCeanfront, an exclusive destination marketing alliance organized to promote Orange County, California’s most prestigious coastal destinations, according to an announcement by Blaise Bartell, chairman of The OCeanfront. The OCeanfront alliance now consists of the area’s 12 leading hotels and resorts, golf club operators, shopping venues and convention and visitors bureaus spanning
the 42-mile stretch of coastline from Huntington Beach to Dana Point.

“The addition of The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel and The Resort at…

According to an article by the National Association of Home Builders builder confidence rises for the the first time in seven months.

September 16, 2008 – Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes rose for the first time in seven months this September, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), released today. The HMI gained two points to 18, rising from its record low of the previous two months.

“Builders have several reasons to be more optimistic at this time,” noted NAHB President Sandy Dunn, a home builder from Point Pleasant, W.Va. “Many are sensing that home sales are nearing a turning point with the support of the newly enacted first-time home buyer tax credit. Meanwhile, with the government’s explicit backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now assured, this should help keep mortgage rates at very favorable levels going forward.”

Following the Treasury Department’s announcement that it was placing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship last week, the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate conforming home mortgages declined by nearly half a percentage point, falling to below 6 percent for the first time in several months. Market responses to the Lehman Brothers…

Have you been wondering what is being developed on the ocean side of the Pacific Coast Highway as you enter Laguna Beach from the north? Here is an article from the Los Angeles Times that explains the development –

El Morro Village: Unpaving paradise near Laguna Beach

Two years after El Morro Village was finally vacated, construction has begun on the state’s first new coastal campground in decades.

By Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
10:47 AM PDT, August 25, 2008

El Morro Village: Unpaving paradise

All that’s left of the 295 seaside trailers just north of Laguna Beach, once festooned with flowerpots and tidy patios, are some crumbling concrete slabs. And memories.

Dump trucks and earthmovers are scraping across 35 acres of canyon and beach, transforming the funky little enclave that was El Morro Village into Southern California’s first coastal campground in two decades.

State parks officials and environmentalists trumpet the $12-million construction project, which began last month, as a victory for public access and the preservation of pristine Orange County coastline.

“Tens of thousands of added Californians and people from all across the nation can now enjoy this spot of Southern California paradise,” said state parks spokesman Roy Stearns. “It opens up a whole new coastal ocean…

Here is more up-beat housing market news in this article from the Wall Street Journal.

R.O.I.
By BRETT ARENDS

Is Housing Slump at a Bottom?
May 6, 2008 7:28 p.m.

Is it time, at long last, to head down to Florida to start looking at homes?

Maybe.

And the nearby chart shows one reason why.

It comes from Wellesley College Prof. Karl E. Case, one of the leading experts on the housing market in the country. And it suggests we may be at, or near, the bottom of the housing crash.

Of course, even if he’s wrong we won’t know for sure for many months.

But new housing starts have at last slumped below the seemingly magical one million mark. That happened in March. Every time that has happened in the last 50 years, it proved to be the bottom of a recession.

“It is really remarkable how much where we are today looks like the bottom we’ve had in the last three cycles,” Mr. Case says. “Every time we’ve gone below a million starts, the market has cleared at that moment.”

There is no guarantee this market will be the same but the similarities with the past are striking. Each boom peaked at around the same level of 2.5 million starts…

Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal which provides another indication that the housing market is starting to recover.

OPINION

The Housing Crisis Is Over
By CYRIL MOULLE-BERTEAUX
May 6, 2008; Page A23

The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.

How can this be? For starters, a bottom does not mean that prices are about to return to the heady days of 2005. That probably won’t happen for another 15 years. It just means that the trend is no longer getting worse, which is the critical factor.

Most people forget that the current housing bust is nearly three years old. Home sales peaked in July 2005. New home sales are down a staggering 63% from peak levels of 1.4 million. Housing starts have fallen more than 50% and, adjusted for population growth, are back to the trough levels of 1982.

Furthermore, residential construction is close to 15-year lows at 3.8% of GDP; by the fourth quarter of this year, it will probably hit the lowest level ever. So…