Jim Hitcher's Real Estate Blog

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WOW! I ran a few calculations of the real estate activity so far since Thanksgiving Day and I was a little surprised.

110 Properties went pending collectively in the 11 days since Thanksgiving 2011 in the cities of Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon and Danville.

In the same period after the Thanksgiving Day holiday in 2010, 83 properties had gone pending.

This year we’ve seen 27  more homes than last year go pending in the first 11 days, which equates to a 32% increase in PENDING SALES over 2010’s numbers. That’s a large number and is difficult to ignore.

Why has this happened?

There can be various reasons as to why this is happening. Among them would be :

People are feeling better about their financial condition

People feel we’re getting closer to the bottom of the real estate market.

People may feel like we have hit the bottom of this tough real estate market.

Investors are finding good value.

Sellers are willing to discount their asking prices to make a sale happen.

You might be wondering what is the break down of these pending sales. How many are the old fashion regular sale and how many are not.

Type of Transaction   2010      2011

Regular Sale                36%        36%

Short Sale                    35%        43%

Bank Owned                29%        21%

Ironically, the regular sales are pending at the same pace as in 2010, but you can see that the number of homes that are classified as a “Short Sale”, or where the home seller owes more than the offer, has increased, while the Bank Owned properties has decreased. Overall, it is some good news for home owners and their single largest asset.

Where do we go from here?

Now this is great news, but will they turn into closed transactions.? That’s the bar that all things in real estate are compared to. All of them will not close, of course, but a foundation for 2012 may be forming with buyers making offers. Like I’ve mentioned before, the holiday months are not the best time to be a seller, but there are still buyers out there, and they’re  making offers. And, from these numbers, there are more serious buyers this year than last year! This should be good news as we go into the spring buying season of 2012.

If you would like some additional information about homes available in the area, email me or give me a call.

More promising news for the real estate market. While it will likely not create a rebound effect for real estate and send  prices soaring, the case is being made that we are closing in on the bottom of the market. Great news for those that are concerned about further price erosion in the real estate market. A bottom is being formed.

Barclays Capital (BCS: 11.92 +0.51%) analyst Stephen Kim predicts a housing recovery buoyed by improving jobs numbers and the fact prices for nondistressed homes will have stabilized without government support.

“In the absence of a government homebuyer incentives, prices for non-distressed home sales have stabilized for almost a year,” Kim said. “This is the most important trend in the housing industry right now, and we are amazed at how little attention it has been getting from the media and the street. This stability on the part of nondistressed prices has occurred despite a very high share of distressed activity and continued declines in overall prices.”

Barclays said recent economic data — including higher job creation in November, housing starts and improved homebuyer traffic — point to some improvement potential in the sector.

In mid-2010, the federal homebuyer tax credit expired, leaving the housing market without training wheels for the first time since the 2008 economic meltdown. Yet, prices in some housing markets remained stable on the back end.

With its new outlook in the market, Barclays upgraded D.R. Horton’s (DHI: 12.61 +6.06%) stock to buy and raised price targets for D.R. Horton, Lennar (LEN: 19.28+4.73%), Toll Brothers (TOL: 20.74 +2.52%) andMeritage Homes (MTH: 22.69 +3.04%).

At the same time, the investment bank raised its 2012 earnings-per-share estimates for D.R. Horton, Lennar, Meritage Homes, Pulte (PHM: 6.39 +3.73%) and Toll Brothers, while lowering its estimates for KB Home (KBH: 7.89 -0.63%).

“Thus, the key to timing housing’s recovery depends primarily on when these first-time buyers decide it is safe to buy a house,” Kim concluded.