Here’s a look at recent news of interest to homebuyers, home sellers, and the home-curious.
IDEAL DAY TO BUY A HOME IN SAN FRANCISCO, SAN JOSE COMING IN FOURTH QUARTER
Bay Area house hunters should mark their calendars for a very specific date, if projections from a new study turn out to be accurate.
RealtyTrac examined the best month and day to buy a home across the U.S. and in major metro areas based on how big of a discount the buyer received over the past 15 years. Nationwide, the ideal month to score a home is October, when the average sales price has been 2.6 percent less than full market value. Drilling down even further, the company estimates that Oct. 8 is the best day of the year to purchase a property, with the average buyer netting a discount of 10.8 percent.
In the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area, Oct. 8 — which falls on Thursday this year — is also the best day for buyers, who have paid an average of 25 percent less than a home’s value on that particular day over the past 15 years. RealtyTrac says that buyers in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area could save up to 28 percent on a home if they target Nov. 25, which this year falls on the day before Thanksgiving.
BAY AREA CITIES HAVE NATION’S LARGEST JOB-TO-HOME-CONSTRUCTION GAP
The Bay Area’s vibrant job market is drawing an influx of workers to the region, but housing construction is failing to keep pace, driving prices up and affordability down.
In a new report, the National Association of Realtors says that home construction is lagging in about two-thirds of U.S. metro areas. Perhaps not surprising to anyone who has been searching for a home in the inventory-starved Bay Area, the disparity between job growth and new housing was greater here than anywhere else in the country. Between 2012 and 2014, the San Jose metro area added 22 jobs for every six housing permits that were issued. In San Francisco, the ratio of jobs to housing permits was 22 to four.
In a statement accompanying the numbers, NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said that sluggish new-home-construction activity is a significant factor in the nation’s housing inventory crunch, along with slow turnover and fewer distressed properties on the market.
LOOMING EL NIÑO COULD END CALIFORNIA’S DROUGHT
Golden State home shoppers planning to hit the open-house circuit this fall and winter may want to keep their rain gear handy, as the chance of a major El Niño system have increased.
SFGate reports that the U.S. Climate Prediction Center last week upped the odds to 95 percent that the El Niño brewing over the Pacific Ocean would last through the winter, ideally bringing much-needed rain and snow to California. The organization says that the system looks to be on par with those in the winter of 1982-1983 and 1997-1998, both of which brought epic levels of precipitation to the Bay Area.
Still, El Niño conditions do not guarantee rain, said state Climatologist Mike Anderson, who urged Californians to continue their water-conservation efforts as the drought continues.
U.S. HOME FORECLOSURES CONTINUE TO PLUNGE
Foreclosures declined for the 45th consecutive month in July, boosted by a thriving U.S. economy and escalating home prices.
In its latest National Foreclosure Report, CoreLogic says there were 469,000 homes in some state of foreclosure in July, down 27.9 percent year over year. There were 38,000 completed foreclosures in July, a decline of 24.4 percent from one year earlier. Just 3.4 percent of U.S. mortgages were classified as seriously delinquent, the lowest rate since December 2007.
In California, foreclosures represented 0.5 percent of inventory, lower than the national average of 1.2 percent, and serious delinquencies accounted for 1.7 percent of state mortgages.
(Photo: Flickr/Dafne Cholet)