Palm Desert real estate, representative of the larger Coachella Valley area, seems to be stabilizing during the first quarter of the fiscal year, according to a March 29, 2010 article in the Desert Sun. This piece found that “The Coachella Valley’s real estate market remained in a ‘stabilizing’ pattern in February with a 14.8 percent jump in prices, while sales rose just .06 percent over February 2009, the California Desert Association of Realtors reported today.” According to Greg Berkemer, the executive directors of the California Desert Association of Realtors, “The desert appears to remain in a stability phase which should remain in place until there is either a change in the market dynamic either some outside force or event and/or buyers’ and sellers’ confidence in the future becomes more evident. Although prices remained flat in February compared to January, sales did move up some by 5.6 percent.”

Palm Desert homes for sale, along with the rest of California’s real estate market, managed to boost a nation-wide measure of real estate health. According to a March 31, 2010 article in the Desert Sun, “A national index of home prices rose unexpectedly in January, with California cities posting strong gains, but some experts warned that the nation’s struggling housing market could be headed for another dip. The closely watched Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of 20 metropolitan areas rose 0.3 percent from December on a seasonally adjusted basis.” The article continued to note that “That marked eight consecutive months of home values improving or at least holding steady. That rise is good news for people who plan to sell their homes this spring.”

Home sales were one especially positive piece of news for Palm Desert real estate for sale, according to a March 18, 2010 article by John Hussar in the Desert Sun. This article observed that “The Coachella Valley’s ‘season’ of postcard-perfect weather and tourism helped propel a jump in existing home sales 10.5 percent in January while prices rose 17.4 percent over January 2009, the California Desert Association of Realtors reported today…The median price of an existing home in the Coachella Valley was $179,760 in January, up 4.3 percent from December and 17.4 percent from January 2009.”

A notable suburb of the Phoenix area, Chandler, Arizona, lies in Maricopa County and is home to a population nearly a quarter of a million. The fast-growing city experienced start rises in real estate prices in recent years, but many of those gains were brought to an abrupt halt at the onset of the U.S. credit crisis, when housing markets across the country collapsed.

According to local realtors John Hall Associates, most recent months have shown some slight signs for optimism in the Chandler real estate market, as sales activity rises. In March, there were 408 homes sold in Chandler, a sizable increase from February’s 275 sales and January’s 234. The figure was the highest monthly figure since October 2009. It is an improvement on figures from one year ago, when there were just 296 sales.

The number of listings has steadily risen as well, tracing an upward-leaning path since September 2009, when it reached a trough. In April, there were 1,671 active listings of Chandler homes for sale, up from 1,613 in March and 1,519 in February. The figure is a drop from one year ago, however, when there were 1,752 listings.

Prices per square foot of homes sold in Chandler are beginning to form a steady line, remaining basically constant over the past year. In March, the figure was $105, the exact same figure as it was one year ago. March also showed a troubling sign however: a spike in foreclosures. There were 391 foreclosure notices in March and 249 trustee sales, both sizable increase from the previous month. Foreclosure notices have fallen since last year though, when there were 438 in March. Trustee sales, however, have risen; there were just 106 last March.

Burlingame, a city in San Mateo County in Northern California, has a resilient real estate market. Despite falls and drops in prices brought about because of the U.S. financial and credit crisis, the Burlingame real estate market has fought on. Though prices still remain below where they were during the pre-recession highs, they are still high compared with other regions in the country.

According to statistics compiled by local realtor Vicki Moore, at the end of 2009, December saw 43 active listings of Burlingame homes for sale, with nine new listings. This was an improvement on November’s market, when there were 70 active listings and 20 new listings. There 26 homes sold in Burlingame in December, an improvement upon November’s 17 sales.

The prices of homes in Burlingame in December were on the rise as well. The median sales price in the month was $1.25 million, up from $1.05 million in November and the highest median since September. This figure is just slightly less than the median sales price during the boom years: In 2007, the median sales price in the city was $1.35 million.  December’s average price was $1.4 million, also up from November’s $1.05 million and nearly meeting September’s average.

Burlingame sellers are getting a good proportion of the asking prices on their homes for sale. In December, the sale price-to-list price ratio was 96.9%. In November, it was 96.7% and in October it was 98%. The average number of days homes in Burlingame spent on the market in December rose from November, when it was just 47, to 60, back to constant with levels in October, when the average was 61 days.