Sales Activity Has Greatly Increased

Courtesy of Kevin Budde, of Bank of America Home Loans. "As a local lender in the south Orange County market, we have see recently a tremendous increase of offers being made on properties. The strongest market is the sale prices under $500,000. Obviously, this is the area of the great affordability. Agents are reporting to us the frequency of multiple offer's being made when a new property comes on the market. This isn't just short sales being priced ridiculously low just to get offers in. These are properties competitively priced and many are equity sellers. FHA financing which will end up being 40% of the financing this year, has been a tremendous help with getting buyers into homes.

What we have really noticed oon our end, is the more frequenet conversations with clients telling us they believe the market is bottoming. 6 months ago everyone was asking why they should purchase now as they believed home prices still had room to fall. Now thy are concerned prices may not fall much more on the low end and they are concerned interest rates may move up as the economy improves. Both are legitimate concerns, rightfully so.

Unfortuanelty, we are no seeing as much enthusiam over the $1 million dollar price range. The cliens who purchase in the upper maret generally are either self-employed or hold executive titles with major corporations. Qualifying self-employed borrowers has become more difficult as they often have many write off's due to business expenses. The executives are not recieving the larg bonuses they were making or stock options they can sell at a large profit.

Never the less, the activity is real and it should continue to grow as the economy stabilizes and improves.