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Archive for December, 2009
Solano County Weekly Real Estate Report: Final Housing Supply Totals For ‘09 Right Here
December 31st, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
Normally, I post my weekly Solano Real Estate Report on Monday or Tuesday, but since New Years Eve falls on a Thursday, I decided to wait until today to post the final home inventory numbers for 2009 — so we can see just how far the supply of homes dropped from start to finish this year.
Today, I’m going to concentrate primarily on the Jan-Dec. totals. So if you want to dissect the raw week-to-week numbers, please be sure to download the full report.
All the housing inventory statistics are there for every week of 2009 and for each of the five cities in our Solano market area. There’s also a separate chart that details the weekly number of pending and closed sales on a week-by-week basis, too.
When you think about where we were a year ago and where Read the rest of this entry »
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Benicia-Vallejo FHA Buyers Get A 6-Week Reprieve On New Appraisal Rules
December 28th, 2009 categories: Buying, Loans / Financing
If you’ve read this blog, you know all about the mess that the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) has created with conventional loans since it was adopted in May.
Well, if you’re planning to buy a home in Benicia, Vallejo or anywhere else in the Solano-Contra Costa market area in the next six weeks and are financing it with an FHA loan, you’ll be glad to know that FHA last week announced it’s going to delay its own version of the HVCC until mid-February.
There have been all sorts of horror stories on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loans since the HVCC went into effect seven months ago.
Stories of inexperienced and out-of-area appraisers getting assignments instead of competent local appraisers who know the area and subtleties of the local market. Read the rest of this entry »
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Are Mortgage Rates Going Up, Up, Up?
December 27th, 2009 categories: Loans / Financing, The Economy
UPDATE (12-28-09): Just came across this Washington Post article, which says that Freddie Mac is predicting interest rates of 6% at some point in 2010.
When you watch the real estate market on a daily basis, as I do, it’s easy to read too much into a few solitary changes over a relatively short period of time.
But every new or emerging trend has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?
And that’s what’s caused me to wonder if the recent uptick in interest rates is just a random blip on the radar screen or instead the beginning of a climb towards higher and higher mortgage rates.
If you haven’t been watching the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (on the left sidebar of our web site), you may not have noticed, but over the past three weeks, interest rates have turned north.
As of Christmas Eve, interest rates nationally had risen to their highest level (5.05%) since Labor Day. And that was just three weeks after hitting an all-time low of 4.71%.
On a historical or even year-to-date scale, a rate of just over 5% shouldn’t sound like bad news at all. Read the rest of this entry »
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Weekly Solano Real Estate Report For Dec. 21: Eager Buyers Keep The Market Alive
December 22nd, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
If you read last week’s Solano Real Estate Report, this week’s edition is going to sound very similar.
That is, if you tried to gauge the time of year by the amount of real estate activity and not the temperature outside, you’d never know it was December.
Even though there are now just 10 days left before 2009 bows out, the real estate market, which typically goes into hibernation by this time of year, is still humming along.
Last week’s sales and pending sales statistics bear this out quite clearly, as all five cities in our Solano County market area continued to report sales numbers either at or very close to their year-to-date averages. Read the rest of this entry »
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Higher FHA Down Payments On The Way?
December 18th, 2009 categories: Buying, Loans / Financing
If you’re one of those hopeful home buyers in Benicia, Vallejo or the rest of Solano County who’s scraped together just enough cash to come up with the minimum FHA down payment and are 
relying on a seller’s closing cost credit to cover most everything else, you might want to reach for the Tums before reading the rest of this post.
That’s because HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan recently told Congress that FHA is considering increasing the minimum down payment and reducing how much a seller can credit to the buyer.
Up until this year, FHA loans had been the ugly stepchild of the mortgage industry for most of this decade — at least here in Solano County and most of the rest of the high-priced Bay Area.
In the interest of jump-starting the economy, the loan limits for FHA loans were raised substantially for 2008 and 2009.
And almost overnight, that turned this almost-forgotten loan into one that 80-90% of all first-time home buyers suddenly turned to.
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Weekly Solano Real Estate Report For Dec. 15: Supply Up In 3 Cities Up, Down In 2 Others
December 16th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
I just downloaded the weekly stats for Solano County’s home sale and listing activity reports, which you can download by clicking on the graphic to the right.
There were more homes on the market last week in Vallejo, Suisun City and Vacaville than the week before.
Meanwhile, the inventory was up in Benicia and Fairfield over that same period.
As we head towards the last few weeks of 2009, Read the rest of this entry »
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How Much Did That Benicia or Vallejo Home Sell For Last Month?
December 12th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Market Update, Selling, Vallejo
Every month I publish a list of home sale statistics for every home that closed escrow the previous month in Benicia or Vallejo.
To see the full report, with home-by-home totals for November, 2009, click on either of the two buttons below.
Here are some highlights from November 2009’s Benicia and Vallejo Home Sale reports:
Benicia
- There were 32 closed sales last month in Benicia — that’s the most of any month so far this year. All but 12 of those were regular, traditional (non-distress) sales. That’s the highest percentage of traditional sales this year — by a long-shot.
- The lowest sales price in Benicia last month was last month was $105,900, for a Bay View Villas condo on Southampton Rd. The highest was for a Read the rest of this entry »
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Solano’s November Home Sales: More Proof That Things Finally Seem To Be Getting Better
December 12th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
Everyone’s been looking for proof that the economy is on the mend.
Well, at the risk of getting too overly giddy just yet, I have to admit that the November home sales numbers for Solano County last month looked awfully encouraging on several fronts.
Before I go any further, let me give my monthly disclaimer, since there’s always a danger in reading too much into home sales statistics from just one single month. The smaller the sample size, the greater the chance of the numbers being skewed due to a few random sales that might tilt the numbers too far in one direction.
So that’s why a quarterly report is usually a far better gauge of the true market. However, you’ll have to wait another month for that report, since we still have to get through the rest of December.
Nevertheless, that disclaimer aside, November’s home sales statistics for Solano County showed an increase in the median sales price over the previous month for every city in our Solano market area.
County-wide, the median price jumped to $219,000, which was easily its high-water mark for the year. That’s $26,000 above last month’s median of $195,000. It’s also only the second time Read the rest of this entry »
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Solano Weekly Real Estate Report For Dec. 7: Even Though It’s December, Sales Still Robust
December 8th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
If you didn’t look at the calendar or feel the frigid weather outdoors, you might not even know that December was here.
I can tell you one thing: you certainly can’t tell it’s December by looking at the local Benicia, Vallejo and Solano County real estate numbers.
Even though December is usually the slowest month of the year for real estate activity, this year things are a little different.
With so much pent-up demand for housing, particularly among first-time buyers, this may be one of the few years in recent memory where sales activity remains high right up until New Years Eve. Read the rest of this entry »
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Living Near Vallejo Or Fairfield REALLY Pays Big Dividends This Time Of Year
December 8th, 2009 categories: Fairfield-Gr Valley, Local Stuff, Vallejo
Every December, one of the things we always look forward to is Meyer Cookware’s 10-day Factory Sale.
In case you’ve never heard of Meyer, they manufacture Circulon, Analon, Kitchen Aid, Farberware and several other popular lines of cookware.
And every December, they open their doors to the public with incredible deals.
About 7-8 years ago, we purchased a set of Circulon pots that were about 40% of what they were selling for at Macy’s. And we’ve been coming back every year since.
Even though our kitchen is jam-packed with all sorts of pots, pans and cooking utensils, we still always seem to find something at the Meyers’ sale that we absolutely “must have.”
In addition to their terrific factory sale prices, they also offer an additional 30% off if you have a coupon. If you don’t have one or forget yours, they’re very liberal and will usually give you that same extra 30% off just for mentioning the coupon. Read the rest of this entry »
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