Housing California

Tumbling interest rates helped resales of California homes rise a modest 4% in November from the previous month, the first month-to-month gain since May, the California Assn. of Realtors said Thursday. But much of the housing market remained sluggish. The higher sales of single-family, detached houses stemmed entirely from gains in Northern California. Sales in the Los Angeles, Orange County and Ventura regions all posted double-digit declines from the previous month.

The ability of a typical American family to buy a home rose in the fourth quarter to its highest level in 18 1/2 years, boosted by rising incomes and falling mortgage rates, a real estate trade group said Friday. The National Assn. of Realtors said its housing affordability index was 129.6 in the October-December period, up from 120.2 a year earlier and the highest since it measured 127.8 in the April-June quarter of 1974.

New home construction in California and the rest of the Western United States surged nearly 18% in March from February, the government said Tuesday, but a huge drop in the weather-battered East pulled down construction activity nationwide by 4.6%. New homes began at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 296,000 units in the West last month, up from February's 251,000-unit rate and well ahead of January's rain-soaked 219,000-unit pace, according to the Commerce Department.

Bad weather and the winter-holiday crunch pushed housing resales lower in California and the rest of the nation during January, two real estate trade groups said Monday. The California Assn. of Realtors said the January sales pace was 435,180 on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, down 12% from an unusually strong sales pace in December but 1.8% higher than in January, 1992. In a separate report, the National Assn. of Realtors said the nationwide January sales pace was 3.

The state board that oversees licensed contractors in California is "critically deficient" in protecting consumers from unscrupulous building trades companies, according to a report issued Tuesday by the state Assembly's consumer protection committee.

Middle East tensions and inflation fears helped boost rates on fixed-rate mortgages in California by more than a quarter of a percentage point in the past week but left largely untouched the rates for more common adjustable-rate home loans, lenders and economists said Tuesday. Another 0.25-point increase for fixed-rate, 30-year loans--now ranging from 10.25% to 10.50% in California--is possible this month as inflation worries persist, economists and lenders said.

The state Senate voted Wednesday night to support a newly launched political effort aimed at helping Donald Trump block construction of a high school on the old Ambassador Hotel site in Los Angeles' mid-Wilshire district. The Legislature's upper chamber then approved a proposed $800-million bond issue negotiated by Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders for school construction statewide.

The double whammy of a severe housing construction downturn and a faster-than-expected slowdown in aerospace is pushing California to the brink of recession, UCLA forecasters warned Thursday. However, the school's economic forecasting unit took pains to note that its view remains considerably more pessimistic than that of some others, who still believe that the state's growth in population and employment is strong enough to weather the current storm.