Median Home Price

Southern California's housing market is headed toward the spring shopping season with strong price gains and a steady improvement in sales. The robust price gains -- driven by a low inventory of homes listed for sale, more move-up purchases and fewer foreclosures -- should help solidify a recovery that began last year, experts said. The March numbers were reported Wednesday by DataQuick, a real estate information service. While some analysts have voiced concern about the potential for speculation in certain fast-gaining markets, many also note that a sharp recovery should be expected given how far home prices fell during the bust.

Sales of newly built homes notched gains last month. Builders in March sold single-family homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 417,000, according to the Commerce Department. That was 1.5% over the prior month and 18.5% above the same month a year earlier. The median sales price for new homes was $247,000 last month. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new homes for sale last month was 153,000 units. That represented a supply of about 4-1/2 months at the current sales rate.

Few markets crashed harder than Compton when California's real estate bubble burst. The city's northwest side saw the median home price plummet to $94,000 in 2009, down from $385,000 at the peak. Foreclosures dotted the streets. Families fled, leaving trash and old furniture behind. "There were a lot of empty houses. It was a big mess," said real estate broker Ruben Magdaleno of Re/Max VIP. These days, the working-class community has a new identity: comeback kid. Northwest Compton has posted the most dramatic price jump of any area in Southern California.

Sales of previously owned homes in the U.S. slipped from the prior month as prices continued to rise -- a sign that demand for housing continues to outstrip supply. Home sales fell 0.6% in March from the prior month, to hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million units, according to the National Assn. of Realtors. The March sales pace was still 10.3% higher than March 2012. INTERACTIVE MAP: The Southland's fastest-recovering ZIP Codes The median home price was up 6.2% from the prior month and 11.8% from the same month a year earlier, to hit $184,300.

Kelly Hamon recently beat out several other home shoppers for a cream-colored North Hollywood home. But the victory came at a steep cost. Frustrated after getting outbid five times by all-cash buyers, Hamon ultimately bid $47,000 more than the asking price. She pursued the home so aggressively, she said, out of fear that the days of low interest rates and affordable prices would soon vanish. "I got really scared," Hamon said. "I got scared that everything was going up. " The once-in-a-lifetime mentality, fueled by a shortage of for-sale homes, is driving the Los Angeles area from recovery to frenzy, according to real estate agents and experts.

The Southland's move-up market showed some signs of life as the region's median home price improved for the second consecutive month in May, new data show. The median home price rose 5.4% in May from the same month last year to hit $295,000, real estate research firm DataQuick reported Wednesday. That was a 1.7% improvement over the prior month. Sales throughout the Southland also improved, up 20.6% from May 2011 and 15.1% from April to hit 22,192. Helping boost the median was a narrower share of foreclosures selling as part of the market for previously owned homes.

One measure of national home prices rose last month with a vigor not seen since the bubble days as the number of foreclosed homes and other distressed properties on the market shrank. The median sales price for previously owned U.S. homes rose 12.3% annually in January to $173,600, the National Assn. of Realtors said Thursday. It was the 11th consecutive month of annual increases and the strongest such gain since November 2005. In the West, the median price rose 26.6% over the year to hit $239,800 as sales fell.

The median home price in California dropped 40% in February from a year earlier, a real estate tracking firm reported Thursday. MDA DataQuick also said that home sales in the state jumped nearly 43%. The San Diego company said the median price was $224,000 last month, compared with $373,000 in February 2008. Foreclosures accounted for 58% of home sales in California last month.

The median home price in California rose to a nearly four-year high in July as more expensive homes sold and fewer foreclosures were purchased in the key Southern California and San Francisco Bay Area markets. The Golden State's median home price rose to $281,000, up 2.6% from June and up 11.5% from July 2011, real estate firm DataQuick reported. It was the fifth consecutive month in which the median has risen year over year and the highest reading for any month since September 2008.

The median home price in Southern California rose about $25,000 in March alone to hit $345,500, underscoring the region's fast-paced recovery. That represented an 8% increase from February and a 23.4% jump from a year earlier. It was the eighth consecutive double-digit increase and the highest level for the median since July 2008, according to March numbers reported Wednesday by real estate firm DataQuick. The robust gains, driven by a low inventory of homes for sale, more "move up" purchases and fewer foreclosures, should help solidify a recovery that began last year.

Southern California's housing market is headed toward the spring shopping season with strong price gains and a steady improvement in sales. The robust price gains -- driven by a low inventory of homes listed for sale, more move-up purchases and fewer foreclosures -- should help solidify a recovery that began last year, experts said. The March numbers were reported Wednesday by DataQuick, a real estate information service. While some analysts have voiced concern about the potential for speculation in certain fast-gaining markets, many also note that a sharp recovery should be expected given how far home prices fell during the bust.

Kelly Hamon recently beat out several other home shoppers for a cream-colored North Hollywood home. But the victory came at a steep cost. Frustrated after getting outbid five times by all-cash buyers, Hamon ultimately bid $47,000 more than the asking price. She pursued the home so aggressively, she said, out of fear that the days of low interest rates and affordable prices would soon vanish. "I got really scared," Hamon said. "I got scared that everything was going up. " The once-in-a-lifetime mentality, fueled by a shortage of for-sale homes, is driving the Los Angeles area from recovery to frenzy, according to real estate agents and experts.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - After George Lucas abandoned plans to build a movie studio along a woodsy road in Marin County, he complained about the permitting process in a place so environmentally friendly that hybrid-car ownership is four times the state average. His next move, some here say, was payback for what Lucas described in a written statement as the "bitterness and anger" expressed by his neighbors. The creator of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" is working with a local foundation that hopes to build hundreds of units of affordable housing on a former dairy farm called Grady Ranch, where his studio would have risen.

Few markets crashed harder than Compton when California's real estate bubble burst. The city's northwest side saw the median home price plummet to $94,000 in 2009, down from $385,000 at the peak. Foreclosures dotted the streets. Families fled, leaving trash and old furniture behind. "There were a lot of empty houses. It was a big mess," said real estate broker Ruben Magdaleno of Re/Max VIP. These days, the working-class community has a new identity: comeback kid. Northwest Compton has posted the most dramatic price jump of any area in Southern California.

One measure of national home prices rose last month with a vigor not seen since the bubble days as the number of foreclosed homes and other distressed properties on the market shrank. The median sales price for previously owned U.S. homes rose 12.3% annually in January to $173,600, the National Assn. of Realtors said Thursday. It was the 11th consecutive month of annual increases and the strongest such gain since November 2005. In the West, the median price rose 26.6% over the year to hit $239,800 as sales fell.

Housing got even costlier in the San Francisco Bay Area last month. For a 10th consecutive month, the median home price in the nine-county region rose year over year to hit $415,000, real estate firm DataQuick reported. That was a 27.3% increase from the same month last year, though a 6.3% decline from the prior month. The region posted its strongest January sales pace in six years, popping up 3.2% from the prior month. A total of 5,501 newly built and previously owned houses and condominiums sold last month.

The Southland's housing market kicked off the new year with a sharp annual gain in home sales last month - the highest volume for a January in six years - as investors and cash buyers proliferated. The region's median home price notched a sharp 23.5% gain from the same month a year earlier, a reflection of both rising prices and a shift in the buying mix from lower-end starter homes to pricier digs. Buyers paid a median $321,000 last month, real estate firm DataQuick reported Wednesday.