by Gene Wunderlich
CoreLogic® has just published their most recent Home Price Index showing a 3.8% rise in home prices for July marking the 5th consecutive month of year-over-year increases. They are forecasting an increase of 4.6% in August and are now anticipating that we will see a gain for the full year.
In this month’s Realtor® Report, you’ll find that housing activity in Southwest California is running slightly ahead of these national numbers with year-over-year increases of 6% in both July and August putting us ahead of 2011 median price by 5% year to date. Temecula posted its 6th consecutive monthly median over $300,000 and its highest month since April 2008 ($347,985).
Sales were down somewhat in August, at least in part due to our increasingly severe inventory shortage. Demand activity remains strong and if we had more homes to sell, they would be selling. Year-to-date sales are 9% ahead of 2011 (4,963/5,454) and still running 4% ahead of 2010 (5,228/5,454) keeping us on pace to set a new high water mark for the region, but our inventory is down 62% since January.
Back in June, I updated you on a bill H.R. 5823. Authored by California Congressman Gary Miller, the “Saving Taxpayers from Unnecessary GSE Bulk Sales Act of 2012” follows months of direct lobbying to the FHFA and others to carve California out of their proposed pilot program to remove hundreds of homes from our inventory and convert them to rentals for 5 years in an ‘effort to stabilize the market’.
Meanwhile the FHFA has announced its intention to proceed with the program and remove 500 for-sale homes in LA and Riverside County to fire-sale to an investor as rentals by year-end. Even if we knew how they were selecting these homes, where they were located and who they were going to sell them to, this would still be a bad program. The fact that we don’t know any of those things only makes it worse.
I would like to thank the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, the Southwest California Legislative Council and the Cities of Temecula and Murrieta (so far) for joining Realtors® in SUPPORTING H.R. 5823 and opposing this FHFA program. Simply stated, the goal of this program is to stabilize the market by removing ‘excess inventory’. But our region has no excess inventory, there is strong demand for the properties we have and our prices have been stable for 3+ years and have recently started to appreciate. This program would make it even more difficult for qualified buyers to find a home in our communities while exposing our neighborhoods to numerous rentals owned by an absentee landlord (hedge fund) just waiting out their 5 years to dump them back onto the market.
To get all the numbers behind the local real estate market as well as more information on how you can join the coalition supporting HR 5823, visit: http://www.slideshare.net/genewunderlich/9-realtor-report