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Laguna Beach home sales dip mid-May, Garden Grove’s up
2008-05-30 19:32:00
DataQuick’s freshest stats from mid-May hint at a distinct turn in the market. For the 22 business days ended May 14, the ZIP code with the fastest drop in sales among O.C.’s 83 major ZIP codes was Laguna Beach 92651 (sales down 67.6%) with a $1.15 million median selling price, while the neighborhood with the fastest growing sales was Garden Grove’s 92843 (+100%) with a median of $389,500. While one set of mid-month stats is no clear trend, and ZIP stats can be volatile, it was not too long ago that DataQuick stats boldly showed the county’s midsection suffering while ocean-close towns were somewhat sheltered from real estate’s tsunami. Full ZIP-by-ZIP coverage for mid-May IS HERE! Countywide for mid-May, sales were down 18.3% vs. a year ago; and pricing was soft (-22.3% vs. a year ago.) Sales activity may be finding a bottom, as bargain hunters emerge. May could be the second straight month with 2,000-plus deals completed after seven consecutive months...
More About: Laguna Beach , Home

No SoCal home-price rebound seen before 2010
2008-05-30 02:00:00
Michael Carney, the Cal Poly Pomona professor who heads the Real Estate Research Council of Southern California, doesn’t expect a SoCal home price turnabout until 2010 at the earliest. “Not in ‘08, for sure; and not in ‘09, with almost certainty,” Carney told me. This week, RERC released its curious, semi-annual tracking of local home prices that involves volunteer appraisers valuing the same homes over and over again. This time around, RERC found SoCal homes depreciating at a 15.4% annual rate, the WORST showing in the 43-year history of these studies. Orange County’s 39 tracked homes contributed a 16.7% dip to the mix. Other counties: L.A., -13.5%; San Diego, -13.7%; Ventura, -15.1%; Santa Barbara, -15.5%; San Berdoo, -18.4%; and Riverside, -21%. Carney implies you don’t have to be an economic professor to understand why home prices are falling at what he called “an astonishing rate” and why they won’t be rebounding very ...
More About: Home , Price

9.6 acre-Coto mansion sells for $19.5 million
2008-05-29 19:05:00
The Register’s ace Coto de Caza editor Mark Eades tracked down this gem of a house sale at what’s believed to be a record price for the gated community … A home in the Los Ranchos Estates section of Coto de Caza sold for $19.5 million last week. The 15,000-square-foot home sits on a 9.6 acre lot with views of the Santa Ana Mountains and Coto de Caza. According to listing information, the custom-built, two-story home on Violeta Lane in the gated community has 7 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms and a 10-car garage. (Read more; more pictures ARE HERE!) This Coto deal comes amid a slew of eye-catching luxury home sales: • The record $35 million price paid for actor Nicolas Cage’s Newport Bay home. • O.C. record for off-water home: $27 million for a Corona Del Mar house. • An Anaheim Hills home fetching $6.3 million, a near-record for that region. And other think the pot of gold’s not exhausted. Consider this $38.5 million listing for a Newport Beach bayfr...
More About: Mansion , Million

13% of Calif. homes have quake insurance. Good call?
2008-05-29 09:00:00
New state Department of Insurance stats show Californians continue to shun earthquake insurance for their residences. In 2007, 13.07% of residential insurance policies included earthquake coverage, that’s up slightly from 12.8% in 2006 and 11.85% in ‘05. Still, it’s the sixth straight year earthquake policies have been written for less than 15% of insured homes, condos, mobile homes and apartments in the state. It’s part of a downward slide in use that began in the mid-1990s. In 1996, for example, 31.4% of insured residences carried earthquake policies. Quake policies aren’t cheap, averaging $775 statewide last year vs. $715 in ‘06, according to state data. Some experts blame the slide in quake-insurance use on property-owner complacency due to the fact that a major quake hasn’t struck California since the big Northridge shaker in 1994. (A list of big California quakes IS HERE!) Others feel the public believes that government aid will pay f...
More About: Homes , Call , Good

May 29 : Avg. US mortgage rates
2008-05-29 06:00:00
Freddie Mac
More About: Mortgage , Rates

O.C. homebuilding off by 40%
2008-05-29 04:27:00
The Construction Industry Research Board reports that Orange County residential building permits issued through April fell to their lowest level in at least 20 years. The number also is down statewide, prompting the California Building Industry Association to worry that that new-home production could fall this year to the lowest level in a recorded history dating to 1954. Total building permits issued in Orange County fell 40.5% as of April, dropping to 1,486 units, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. Permits for single-family homes and side-by-side condos dropped nearly 42%, to 531, the research board reported. Permits for multifamily units– apartments and multi-story condo buildings — dipped nearly 40%, to 955. The estimated value of non-residential construction continues to outpace the homebuilding, although both residential and non-residential construction fell in the first part of the year (see chart). Residential building permits had an estimated val...

SoCal home pricing seen at worst in 43+ years
2008-05-28 19:09:00
The Real Estate Research Council of Southern California has perhaps the most curious tracking of local home value: Every six months they send out volunteer appraisers who value the exact same homes over and over again. While it involves a small sample of homes — 308, to be exact — it’s a marker that’s not tilted by changing mixes of homes that sold recent, a problem with other indexes, for example. And RERC’s been doing this math for 43 years, so there’s great history, too. The latest chapter of these appraisals is downright upsetting. SoCal homes are depreciating at a 15.4% annual rate, the WORST showing in the history of these studies. Orange County’s 39 tracked homes contributed a 16.7% dip to the mix. The recent drop leaves the RERC average home price for SoCal at $560,260 — the lowest in four years. RERC notes that prices failed to increase for 98% of the homes studied in 7 SoCal counties (all of O.C.’s 39 tracked homes we...
More About: Home , Years

O.C.’s commercial construction down in ‘08
2008-05-28 13:32:00
The Construction Industry Research Board reports that permits for commercial construction in Orange County fell in every category but two during the first four months of the year. The Burbank-based group released figures recently showing that the estimated value of permits for non-residential construction fell nearly 40% this year so far from the same period in 2007. Permit values fell to just under $527 million so far this year. Last year, developers received permits for projects valued at $873 million from January through April. The latest data further underscores reports about a softening of the commercial real estate market caused by the credit crunch. This year’s slowdown follows two years of record construction, demand and price appreciation for commercial properties. Here are percentage changes by category: Industrial: -68.8% Office: -68% Stores: -79.1% Hotel-Motel: -86.7% Alterations and Additions: -10% Other Non-residential: -45.9% The only two categories not to fal...
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S&P puts LA/OC home prices off 24.4% from peak
2008-05-28 02:34:00
It could be worse. The latest reading for home-price indexes tracking 20 U.S. cities from S&P/Case-Shiller finds five regions falling harder than us. Here’s how the latest data, for March, looks vs. each region’s peak in pricing … Las Vegas, -27.9% Phoenix , -26.6% San Diego, -25.9% Miami, -25.6% Detroit, -24.8% LA/OC, -24.4% Tampa, -23.4% San Francisco, -22.9% Washington, -19.4% Minneapolis, -16.9% Cleveland, -13.8% Boston, -13.1% Chicago, -10.8% Denver, -9.2% New York, -8.9% Atlanta, -8.7% Seattle, -7.3% Portland, -6.5% Dallas, -5.8% Charlotte, -3.2% 20-city index, -16.6% This is in line with federal data showing O.C. with the 22nd worst home market nationally out of 292 tracked. Says David Blitzer of Standard & Poor’s: “The steep downturn in residential real estate continues. … There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data.” To read the full S&P report, CLICK HERE!
More About: Home , Peak , Prices

Ailing O.C. builder gets half-billion-buck bailout
2008-05-27 15:58:00
Standard Pacific of Irvine, the ailing builder, said this morning it found a financial savior in a complex deal that would apparently ease the company’s cash crunch. The magic potion is a complicated arrangement with investor MatlinPatterson that sees $530 million in fresh capital boosting Standard Pacific. MatlinPatterson, founded by former Wall Street traders of distressed debt, invests in troubled companies. Among its well-known bets was aiding what’s now known as the MCI communications company out of bankruptcy. If nothing else, MatlinPatterson must see long-term value in homebuilding. MatlinPatterson’s deal with Standard Pacific will need approval of the builder’s stockholders, who’ve seen their shares loses 90% of their value in the real estate downturn. Once the news came out, Standard Pacific’s stock soared. Traders bid up Standard Pacific’s bonds, too. Standard Pacific got into a financial pickle by, among other things, losing $216 ...
More About: Buck , Half , Builder , Bailout , Billion

61 Realtor groups eye statewide MLS
2008-05-27 09:07:00
The California Association of Realtor s reported recently that 61 multiple listing services or Reator assocaitons have sent in letters indicating that they intend to be part of the new statewide database of homes for sale. Currently there are more than 70 MLS’s in the state and 117 associations of Realtors. Supporters of the new project are hoping that the database eventually will evolve into a single multiple listing service for all California.CAR’s board voted in October to form a statewide database that individual MLS’s could voluntarily join. Under the proposed system, the statewide system will combine all listings of homes for sale from participating groups into a single database. While the general public wouldn’t have access to the statewide system, sellers could benefit by gaining exposure throughout California and buyers could use local agents they’re familiar with to search for homes in communities outside their local areas. Some local Realtor a...
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Renters spooked about homebuying. Agree?
2008-05-26 23:05:00
A new National Apartment Association survey reports that 69% of renters plan to stay in their rentals over the next year rather than buying a home.”The results of this survey reflect what our membership is experiencing across the country: Renters are not eager to take a chance on homeownership this year,” said Douglas Culkin, association president. “If the economy improves, that trend may abate, but, for now, people are generally staying put.”Harris Interactive conducted the survey of 2,041 adults between May 7 and May 9. Of those polled, 1,258 owned and 563 rented. The remainder had other arrangements, such as living with family. (CLICK HERE for the press release.)Among the key findings: 80% percent believe that the current housing market situation will worsen or stay the same over the next six months. 69% percent of the renters said they plan to continue renting for up to five more years. 50% of the renters plan to continue renting their current resi...

O.C. real estate/finance jobs creep up again
2008-05-26 12:01:00
State Employment Development Dept. stats, analyzed by your blogger, show that Orange County real estate and finance jobs last month rose again — this time by 800 jobs to 234,400, the first back-to-back, month-to-month gain in 13 months. However, it may be a seasonal boost. The two-month gain of 2,600 is no where near the average 4,600 gain seen from February-to-April since 1990.It’s rare good news for this ailing sector. In the past year, O.C. real estate and finance bosses slashed 17,200 jobs, or a drop of 6.8% as the housing slump and credit crunch got worse. All told, work in these heavily land-related industries is off 10.2% from its September ‘06 peak. The drop pushed real estate/finance’s share of the overall O.C. workforce to under 16%, lows last seen in 2004. And it should be noted that these state stats do not track the self-employed or independent contractors, categories of work common in the real estate/finance world. So it’s likely these i...
More About: Finance , Estate , Real Estate , Jobs , Real

Magazine finds O.C. a prime housing-bust lesson
2008-05-25 23:00:00
Money magazine’s latest cover story about real estate market lessons for the rest of the nation focuses on, in good part, Orange County. “The L.A. story,” the magazine wrote, “is likely to be your story too.” But half of the cases used to illustrate what’s happening in Southern California are from O.C. Here are some excerpts: Near the end of the 241 lies Ladera Ranch, a nine-year-old (and still growing) planned community of 25,000. Nestled into the foothills, the place is a visual metaphor for the American dream, California division, in which the residents of the postmodern townhouses at the lower elevations aspire to the gated $4 million spreads at the top. Yet there’s a whiff in the air - not of smoke - but of despondency. According to Foreclosure Radar, a Web service that searches public records, more than 100 homes in Ladera Ranch are in “pre-foreclosure,” which starts when a bank sends the homeowner a first notice of default...
More About: Magazine , Housing , Bust , Lesson , Prime

Housing sinks Vallejo into bankruptcy
2008-05-25 22:49:00
Bloomberg News reports … Vallejo , with a population of 117,000, faces ballooning labor costs and declining housing-related tax revenue. The city expects a $16 million deficit for the fiscal year that starts July 1.Police and firefighting salaries, pensions and overtime consume more than 70 percent of the city’s $89 million general fund budget. That’s higher than the 60 percent average throughout the state, according to the League of California Cities.“I guess the battle goes into a courtroom now,” said Kenneth Shoemaker, a city worker and member of the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union. The 20 largest creditors without collateral backing their claims are owed a total of $321.8 million, court papers show. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension fund, is owed $135.4 million for retiree health benefits and $83.9 million for unfunded pension plan benefits. Ah, feels like 1994 all ...
More About: Housing , Bankruptcy , Sinks

Insider Q&A told housing comeback starts in ‘10
2008-05-24 09:01:00
Steve Cameron is president and founder of Foremost Communities Inc., an Irvine-based land development and investment company. A former chief operating officer at homebuilder Fieldstone Communities, Cameron teamed up last summer with Starwood Capital Group Global LLC to buy about $250 million in developable land in Southern California. The new joint venture, dubbed Forestar Land Partners LLC, plans to resell the land in the next housing boom.Cameron, who lives in Newport Beach, has more than 20 years of experience in Southern California real estate development and financing and has served as past president of the Orange County Chapter of the Building Industry Association. We asked him about the housing market as well as the availability of land bargains in today’s climate:Us: As someone who’s long been watching the local housing market from the homebuilding side of the equation, how do you see the current O.C. housing market and what are the prospects for a recovery?Camer...
More About: Housing , Told , Insider , Comeback

Homebody’s weekend around the house
2008-05-24 07:00:00
The Register’s ace home design and gardening guru Cindy McNatt, author of the ‘Homebody’ blog (CLICK HERE), joins us with must-read ideas for those destined for a weekend around the house. Get the best price for furniture Cleaning hardwood floors House colors Design Tip Patriotic party ideas for Memorial Day
More About: Weekend , The House

Realtors say O.C. April house sales up, inventory down
2008-05-24 01:24:00
The California Association of Realtors reported today that the number of existing single-family houses sold in Orange County last month increased for the first time in 14 months, rising 14.8% from April 2007. The findings are more upbeat than those of DataQuick, whose data includes sales outside the multiple listing service used by the Realtors. DataQuick reported Monday that house sales fell in April by nearly 12% from the year before. Both indexes showed similar percentage declines in prices. CAR reported today that the median house price — or price at the midpoint of all sales — fell 22.6% to $578,010. DataQuick reported Monday that the median house price fell 22.9% to $555,000. Meanwhile, CAR’s latest home-price report shows a dramatic drop in the number of months needed to sell all the homes on the market at the current sales pace. It would take 9.9 months to sell the current Orange County listings, CAR reported, down from a record high of 33.4 months in Janua...
More About: House , Sales , Inventory

Early May O.C. home price below $500,000
2008-05-23 18:23:00
Fresh homebuying stats from DataQuick shows you no longer need a half-million bucks to buy the mythical “typical” Orange County residence. For the 22 business days ended May 6, the median selling price was $490,750, a 22.1% drop from a year ago and 23.9% off the June ‘07 peak of $645,000. If the current pricing hold for all of May, it would mark the first time a month’s median had been below $500,000 since March ‘04. The price fall is widespread as just 14 of O.C.’s 83 ZIPs saw higher median prices this year vs. last. (ZIP chart is HERE!) The low pricing has helped sales activity a bit, as the latest reading shows volume above 2,000 purchases per month. Several measures of affordability suggest that local shoppers have far greater buying power today. April was the first month in nine months where sales topped that 2,000 level, which — I must add — is about half the historic norm. Here’s a look at the market for that period by k...
More About: Home , Price , Early

Homes replacing Santa Ana’s last orange grove?
2008-05-23 04:00:00
Doug Irvine of The Register reports that a developer has bought perhaps the last, significant orange grove in Santa Ana … Empire Homes of Irvine wants to build 24 houses on the land, next to Portola Park in the northeast corner of the city. The company is banking on the idea that the housing market will have at least stabilized by the time the first houses are ready for sale in early 2010, executive vice president Marc Gerber said. He declined to say how much the houses will cost.City planners are reviewing the project and have not yet signed off on it. “It looks like a really great little project,” said Jay Trevino, the executive director of the city’s Planning and Building Agency. There aren’t many places like the old orange grove left in Santa Ana . By the city’s estimates, 98 percent of the land inside its borders is already developed. To read more, CLICK HERE!
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O.C. homes seen as 25% less unaffordable
2008-05-22 22:00:00
Analyst Erik Franks at John Burns Real Estate Consulting from Irvine notes that falling prices are making a serious dent in shoppers’ affordability challenges nationwide: Housing affordability has improved dramatically in the last year, particularly in those markets where affordability was previously the most concerning. Each month, we calculate our Housing Cycle Barometer rating - a measure of the relationship between incomes and housing costs - for more than 380 metro areas across the country. The number of markets that we designate as “Areas of Significant Affordability Concern” - where the Barometer rating was 7.5 or higher (out of 10) - has fallen from 42 markets one year ago to only 3 markets today. By Franks’ math, O.C. is one of those markets that dropped off JBREC’s affordability danger list. Its affordability rating of 6.6 out of 10 in this latest report was way down from 8.8 a year ago, or — by your blogger’s math — a 25% d...
More About: Homes

O.C. ranked nation’s 22nd worst housing market
2008-05-22 16:52:00
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s first quarter data puts O.C. home values down 11.16% in the year ended in the first quarter, 22nd worst among the 292 major markets the agency follows. The OFHEO report noted that its math found the first quarter’s worst markets in California: Merced (-24.7%), Stockton (-21.5%), and Modesto (-21.0%). Best? Houma-Bayou, Louisiana (+11.2%), Grand Junction, Colorado (+9.1%), and Wenatchee, Wash. (+8%). As for states, California (-10.6%) was the first quarter’s worst, followed by Nevada (-10.3%), Florida (-8.1%), Arizona (-5.5%), and Michigan (-3.1%). Best? Wyoming (+6.3%), Utah (+5.6%), Montana (+4.9%), Texas (+4.7%), and Alabama (+4.5%). (Read more of OFHEO report HERE!) Some observers feel the OFHEO indexes have lost their significance because they track pricing by looking at information obtained from the two mortgage-owning giants OFHEO regulates: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who only buy smaller “conformi...
More About: Market , Nation

Lennar’s woes not seen as Great Park hurdle
2008-05-22 14:00:00
Is the housing slump threatening funding for Orange County’s Great Park ? Officials at the Great Park Corp. and private home developer Lennar Corp. insist that it is not. The park has more than $100 million in available funds, enough to pay for development for several years, they said. “We are in excellent shape,” said Larry Agran, an Irvine city councilman and chairman of the Great Park board. But some critics argue that Lennar’s decision to postpone construction of 3,625 park-area homes until at least 2010 will delay bonds needed to pay for park infrastructure. The decision also affects the ability to raise property taxes earmarked for park development, they said. “That’s going to affect their ability to build the backbone system and generate money through tax imcrements,” complained Dick Sim, a former Irvine Co. executive who resigned from the park board in 2005 over differences with Agran. “They’re going to have a lot less mon...

May 22 : Avg. US mortgage rates
2008-05-22 06:00:00
Freddie Mac
More About: Mortgage , Rates

$38.5 million mansion attracts three interested parties
2008-05-22 04:00:00
A Newport Beach mansion that went on the market last week for $38.5 million has already attracted “three parties who are fairly interested, which is more than I expected especially this quickly,” said Victoria Lee of HOM Group, who has the listing. “The upper end is alive and well,” said Lee said of the local housing market. But figuring out how Orange County’s luxury home market is doing isn’t that obvious. It depends on which luxury home you are talking about – and how you define a luxury home. The luxury market starts at about $2 million in places like Anaheim Hills and Irvine, or at about $4 million in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, brokers say. Even within the luxury market, there are big gradations. Demand for the most expensive homes remains strong, and has little connection to the economy, interest rates or availability of financing, brokers say. Besides location, attributes like how much land a home has, its view, waterfront access and size can combin...
More About: Parties , Mansion , Million

Traders see LA/OC price falling 24.8% more
2008-05-21 21:01:00
My occasional glance at TFS Derivatives‘ weekly report on trading of home-price contracts shows that money’s being bet on further drops in regional values as measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes. It’s one more projection, one backed up by somebody’s cash. The local pain, by TFS’ math, will be steep looking at the April reading of the 10 S&P/Case-Shiller regional indexes and how recent traders’ bets translate to November 2009 pricing: • LA/OC -24.8% (Much of that drop, an 18.5% drop by TFS math, will come by this November!) • Vegas, -22% • Miami, -20% • San Francisco, -14.1% • New York, -12.9% • San Diego, -12.9% • DC, -11.1% • Chicago, -10.7% • Denver, -9.8% • Boston, -4.4% These traders don’t see much of a cyclical bottom forming this bring, for sure. The 10-city composite index shows a 9.8% through November ‘09.
More About: Traders , Price

Fed’s ‘bleak’ outlook for housing
2008-05-21 20:18:00
Minutes of the April 29-30 Federal Reserve Board meeting, where the central bankers cut the key Fed Funds rate by a quarter point to 2%, show this participant angst about real estate … The housing market had continued to weaken since the previous meeting, and participants saw little indication of a bottoming out in either housing activity or prices. Housing starts and the demand for new homes had declined further, house prices in many parts of the country were falling faster than they had towards the end of 2007, and inventories of unsold homes remained quite elevated. A small number of participants reported tentative signs that housing activity in a few areas of the country might be beginning to pick up, and a narrowing of credit risk spreads on AAA indexes of sub-prime mortgages in recent weeks was also noted. Nonetheless, the outlook for the housing market remained bleak, with housing demand likely to be affected by restrictive conditions in mortgage markets, fears that ho...
More About: Outlook

Apartment smoking bans. Good idea?
2008-05-21 17:28:00
Apartments.com’s latest tenant survey says renters — even those who don’t smoke — aren’t that crazy about smoking bans. Of those surveyed, 44.7% opposed the idea of making smoking in apartments illegal while 39.1% supported a ban. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed — 61.9% — were non-smokers. About a third of the respondents — 31.8% — said a property management company shouldn’t decide that you can’t smoke in the privacy of your own apartment. Another 22.2% didn’t mind people smoking in their own place as long as it didn’t affect them. (CLICK HERE to see the survey.) The survey comes as more cities are considering bans on smoking in apartments. Calabasas was the most recent one in California. In January, the Calabasas City Council expanded its ban on smoking in apartment common areas to require landlords to set up outdoor areas for smokers. Belmont in the Bay Area also passed a ban. Should smokin...
More About: Idea , Smoking , Good

Office owner Maguire a good longterm bet?
2008-05-21 09:01:00
Michael Knott, a senior analyst at Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, thinks Nelson Rising, the new boss at troubled office-tower owner Maguire Properties Inc., will turn this O.C.-heavy real estate investment trust around — but it could take awhile. Rising took over the reins of the company Saturday after founder Robert F. Maguire III stepped down following his failed attempt to buy 75% of the firm. The L.A.-company owns 17 properties in Orange County, a market that’s now seeing double-digit vacancies due to the mortgage meltdown and a slowing economy. “Nelson Rising, the new CEO, is a positive,” said Knott, who specializes in office REITs. Knott noted that Rising knows something about turnarounds. In the ’90s, Rising brought Catellus Development Corp., the development spinoff of Southern Pacific Railroad, back from a slumping real estate market. Knott said Rising also has a major incentive to turn Maguire around. “If he gets the stock pri...
More About: Office , Good , Owner

O.C. home affordability jumps in 2008’s first quarter
2008-05-21 02:30:00
The National Association of Home Builders reported today that the percentage of Orange County homes that a median-income family could afford doubled in the first quarter of 2008 to 17.4%, up from 8.4% in the fourth quarter of 2007.Also out today, the California Association of Realtors reported that affordability levels for first-time homebuyers rose to a level not seen since 2003.CAR reported that 36% of local households could afford an O.C. starter home during the first three months of the year, up eight percentage points from the last quarter of 2007.The minimum household income needed to buy an entry-level home in Orange County fell $22,000 from a year ago, dropping to $96,740 in the first quarter of ‘08, CAR reported.”It’s very simple: Prices have declined. Interest rates have gone down, and income has gone up,” said Gopal Ahluwalia, NAHB’s vice president of research.But the rise in affordability won’t last, Ahluwalia added: “When the ma...
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