Newport among state’s top home gains

July 30th, 2010, 12:01 am ·  posted by Jon Lansner

Newport Beach cracked the Top 10 list of California cities with the largest year-over-year home prices gains, based on changes in the median selling price as tracked by the California Association of Realtors. June’s list …

1. National City, up 59 percent
2. Newport Beach, 52 percent
3. Richmond, 52 percent
4. San Bernardino, 47 percent
5. San Pablo, 38 percent
6. Fairfield, 37 percent
7. Walnut, 34 percent
8. Colton, 32 percent
9. Imperial Beach, 31 percent
10. Poway, 30 percent

CAR notes: “Large changes in local median home prices typically indicate both local home price appreciation, and often, large shifts in the composition of housing market activity.”

Statewide, CAR said the median selling price of an existing home rose 13.6 percent vs. June 2009. In Orange

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Home sales up in 59 O.C. ZIPs

June 25th, 2010, 9:01 am . posted by Jeff Collins

For the 22 business days ending June 7 – DataQuick’s freshest stats — Orange County home buying patterns showed:

• Fifty-four of O.C.’s 83 ZIP codes had gains in their respective median selling price. (Highlighted in green below!) Overall, prices were up 7.1% vs. a year ago.
• Five of O.C.’s ZIPs had median sales prices above $1 million in the period vs. 11 million-dollar ZIPs when the county median price peaked in June 2007. Since that pricing pinnacle, there’s been a 30% drop in the countywide median price!
• Fifty-nine of O.C.’s ZIPs had year-over-year sales gains in the period. Overall, sales were up 11.5% vs. a year ago.
• Thirty-seven ZIP codes had gains in both sales and prices.
• Three of O.C.’s ZIPs has sales gains of 100% or more in the period.

Here’s a

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Beach town home sales up 40%

June 13th, 2010, 12:33 am · posted by Jon Lansner

For the 22 business days ending May 25 – DataQuick’s latest stats — the 17 ZIPs located in beach towns communities showed …

• 587 homes sold, that is +40.1% vs. a year ago.
• The median selling price of these ZIPs was $719,000 – that is +7.1% vs. a year ago.
• The beach towns ZIPs comprised 18.5% of the recent home sales in Orange County vs. 15.2% a year ago.

A little geographical context …

• 36 ZIP codes in beach towns and inland South County communities had 1,523 homes sales. That’s up 38.6% vs. a year ago.
• 47 ZIP codes in mid-county and inland North County communities had 1,657 homes sales. That’s down 0.4% vs. a year ago.
• Thus, the share of Orange County homes sold in mid-county and inland North County neighborhoods was 52% vs. 60% a year ago.

The ZIP-by-ZIP results for beach towns

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O.C. home median price at 21-month high

June 4th, 2010, 9:09 am · posted by Jon Lansner

For the 22 business days ending May 18 – DataQuick’s latest real estate buying report — Orange County saw …

For the 22 business days ending May 18

Slice	Price	Yr. ago	Sales	Yr. ago
Houses	$515,000	+15.7%	1,935	+7.0%
Condos	$295,000	+13.5%	926	+18.9%
New	$640,000	+34.9%	195	+61.2%
All O.C.	$440,000	+12.8%	3,056	+12.8%

• $440,000 median selling price that is up 12.8% vs. a year ago yet -32% below June 2007’s peak of $645,000.
• A median of $440,000 was last seen in Orange County in August 2008.
• The most recent median is 19% above the cyclical low hit in January 2009 at $370,000 — a current bottom that was 43% below the peak.
• The median selling price of an Orange County

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Newport Beach homes own the most zip

June 3rd, 2010, 12:01 am · posted by Jon Lansner

Newport Beach 92660 had Orange County’s zippiest housing market in the most recently concluded quarter.

So says our Zippy rankings that weigh pricing and sales momentum plus foreclosure frequency as measured by DataQuick stats.

This ZIP — running from Back Bay to around Fashion Island up to the toll road –ranked 7 of 83 for pricing; 2 for sales; and 6 in terms of foreclosures frequency in the community. In the previous quarter, this ZIP ranked 19 of 83 overall.

Second strongest was Newport Beach 92663 – from the pier to around the bay up to Hoag Hospital — followed by Irvine 92614 as third best. The beach theme in the Top10 also included Laguna Beach 92651 (#5); Newport Coast 92657 (#6); and Newport Beach 92661 — basically, most of the Balboa Peninsula (#8).

When you look at the 83 major ZIPs in the county and their Zippys rankings, you see these trends for the best-performing communities:

* The

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The 2010 Balboa Island Artwalk Sunday May 16, 2010 9am-5pm, Free Admission

This year’s event will feature over 90 artists exhibiting original oil paintings, acrylics, watercolors, glass, ceramic, sculpture, jewelry and photography along the South Bayfront of Balboa Island.

The Balboa Island Artwalk is the premier showcase for talented local artists and marks the start of the Island’s summer season. Celebrating its sixteenth anniversary, the Artwalk will take place on Sunday, May 16th, from 9am to 5pm along the South Bayfront Promenade of Balboa Island. Admission is free.

This fine art show features artists exhibiting paintings, fine jewelry, blown glass, sculpture, and photography. Spectators will enjoy live music throughout the day on four stages along the walk. Performing musicians include the Retros, Don Ross Duo, Garry Gould, Rick Sherman and Alan Remington, Jim Roberts, and Grant Peakcock.

Limited-edition Artwalk posters and t-shirts will be available at Sapphire & South Bayfront.

A comfortable

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By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — John Paulson, the hedge-fund manager famous for betting against mortgage securities, is now bullish on the U.S. housing market and the economy.

During a conference call with investors Wednesday, Paulson said he was concerned earlier this year about a potential double-dip recession.

“I’m not concerned about that at all today,” he said. It’s more likely there could be a V-shaped recovery, Paulson elaborated.

House prices have stabilized and could climb 8% to 10% nationwide in 2011, he added.

Corporate earnings are coming in ahead of expectations, the stock market is stronger and there’s a “vibrant” credit market. With the “final leg” of a rising housing market, “the outlook for 2011 could be very strong,” Paulson said.

Paulson oversaw $32 billion in assets at the start of 2010, making it the third-largest hedge-fund firm in the world behind J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.  and Bridgewater Associates.

The firm grew quickly after it made billions of dollars betting against mortgage-related securities before the housing market collapsed in 2007.

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Homebuying up 52% at beach, south O.C.
April 18th, 2010, 7:58 am
posted by Jon Lansner

For calendar month March – freshest numbers from DataQuick — our region-by-region analysis of homebuying shows Orange County slices up geographically speaking this way …

• DataQuick identified 704 homes selling in Orange County’s north-inland ZIP codes in this most recent period, +6% from a year ago.
• Median selling price? $448,000 in these 23 ZIPs. This most recent median price change was +11.0% vs. a year ago.
• Mid-county ZIPs — median selling price $347,000 – had 762 sales, -10% from a year ago. In these 24 ZIPs, the freshets median price change was +7.2% vs. a year ago. Combined, total homes sales in ZIPs in the north and mid-section of Orange County were -2.7% vs. a year ago as homebuying the the rest of the county ran +51.6% vs. 12 months earlier.
• North/mid-county homes accounted for 54% of residences sold in the most recent period vs. 65% a year ago. 460 homes sold in beach cities’ 17 ZIP codes in

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It is here. The 37th Annual Newport Beach In The Water Boat Show.
Spend a day viewing the large array of vessels and then enjoy a pleasant dinning experience along the waterfront in the Lido Village area of Newport Beach.

More Big Boats

The Newport Boat Show is the premier in-water big-yacht show of the West. No PWC or runabouts. The Newport Boat Show is one show that features big boats along with the gear and equipment that makes owning one more enjoyable. With more than 300 boats on display and no limit on the size of bigger vessels, this is the one show serious buyers won’t want to miss. And neither will you!

Beautiful Newport Beach, California is the ultimate location for a big-boat show. Spend the day outside touring some of the finest yachts in the world at the Lido Marina Village where you’ll also enjoy easier access, free off-site parking and shuttle service and a collection of excellent waterfront restaurants. No other show can compare to everything the Newport Boat Show has to offer. And there's no better place to see the latest and greatest models from the world’s finest

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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By CNBC.com | 26 Feb 2008 | 09:43 AM ET

The US economy will avoid recession as the housing market begins to recover this spring, according to billionaire investor Sam Zell.

Speaking on “Squawk Box” this morning, Zell attributed much of the current economic troubles to fear-mongering and politicking by Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

“Obviously what we have going on is an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Zell, chairman of Equity Investments Group and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other companies. “We have two Democratic candidates who are vying with each other to describe the economic situation worse.

“The reality is that if you live on Wall Street and you’re in the credit markets the world couldn’t be worse. If you’re a farmer and you’re getting $25 for your wheat, you’re having a great time. If you’re a CEO and you’ve got a balance sheet that’s bullet-proof, you’re in a great position. This whole thing is way out of control, way out of hand.”

Zell said that although

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