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By , May 14, 2010 2:12 am

The Palo Alto real estate market is very closely related to the greater Bay Area real estate market, and seems to be showing some signs of improvement. According to a March 11, 2010 article from ABC 7 News, “For the first time in a long time, some of the Bay Area’s hardest hit counties are seeing their foreclosure numbers drop compared with last year. In San Joaquin County, foreclosure filings have dropped 42 percent since February 2009; in Alameda, foreclosure filings are down 16 percent and in Contra Costa County, filings are down 3 percent.” In the words of Elaine Brooks-Cox, a foreclosure contractor with Pacific Community Services, “Just recently we’ve seen a small slowdown. Our inventory for foreclosure inventory and short-sale inventory and a short-sale inventory in the local 680 corridor is down; we’re seeing probably a decrease by as much as 60 percent over what it was last year.”

Home prices are another bright spot for Palo Alto homes for sale, according to a  March 18, 2010 online article from the Los Angeles Times. The article stated that “The median price paid for a Bay Area home jumped 20% in February as fewer foreclosures were on the market, the San Diego research firm MDA DataQuick said Thrusday. Sales fell for the second month in a row. Potential buyers had trouble securing financing, were concerned about job security or had a difficult time competing for a home as inventory tightened, DataQuick said.” According to John Walsh, the President of DataQuick, “The market remains fundamentally off kilter. There’s still relatively little lending going on in the upper price ranges, and little adjustable-rate financing, which have been vital to the Bay Area.”

One possible negative influence on Palo Alto real estate for sale was negative news regarding home sales. According to a March 19, 2010 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The volume of Bay Area home sales dipped in February compared with a year ago, while the median price continued to rise, according to a real estate report released on Thursday…A total of 3,582 existing single-family homes changed hands in the nine-county region in February…”

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By , May 6, 2010 2:17 am

The Beverly Hills real estate market, traditionally among the most expensive and prestigious in the country, has been recovering strongly from the aftermath of the economic recession. According to an April 13, 2010 article in the Associated Press, “The median home price in Southern California rose 14 percent last month from March 2009, as more high-end homes trickled into the region’s sales mix, a tracking firm said Tuesday. San Diego-based MDA DataQuick reported that last month’s median of $285,000 was up from $250,000 in March 2009 and up almost 4 percent from February’s $275,000.” The article, written by Jacob Adelman, continued to state that “DataQuick President John Walsh said the increases showed that the market was continuing on a slow, upward trajectory, but that sales still remain well below their March average of around 25,000.”

Foreclosures, which have recently been a problem for Beverly Hills homes for sale, have sharply declined in recent months. According to an April 20, 2010 article in the Press Telegram, “The number of Los Angeles County homes slipping toward foreclosure dropped by 43.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared to the same period in 2009, a real estate information service reported today. Lenders sent default notices to 15,797 homeowners in Los Angeles County in the first quarter, down from the previous year’s first-quarter total of 27,981, according to La Jolla-based MDA DataQuick.” The piece continued to note that “Statewide, default notices were sent to 81,054 homeowners in the first quarter of the year, DataQuick reported. That was a 4.2 percent decrease from the previous quarter’s 84,568 notices and down 40.2 percent from the same quarter in 2009, when 135,431 default notices were sent.”

This same general trend of positive news for Beverly Hills real estate was echoed by an April 16, 2010 article in the Los Angeles Times. This piece, noted by Alejandro Lazo, found that “The median price paid for a California home in March jumped 14.3% compared with the same month last year, reflecting a reduction in the number of foreclosure properties on the market and the comeback of higher-priced coastal areas.”