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Digital News Report – California home prices are on the rise across the whole state, according to a report by DataQuick. The median home price paid for the month of May 2010 was $278,000 which was an increase of 20.9 percent from the same month last year of $230,000.
There was an increase of 9 percent from April to May’s average new and resale houses and condos that were sold. The median home price peaked in early of 2007 at an average home price of $484,000.
Home foreclosures were still a considerable amount of the homes sold, with 35.5 percent of the real estate properties sold being foreclosed on in the last year. It is an improvement however considering the same time one year ago, foreclosed home sales made up 50.2 percent of the home sales. The highest number of foreclosed home sales was in February of 2009 with 58.8 percent of the homes sold being foreclosures. The foreclosure activity said MDA DataQuick is still high in historical numbers overall.
Not mentioned by MDA DataQuick is that struggling homeowners have been seeking out Obama’s government home loan modification program to refinance their existing mortgage into lower monthly payments. This could have helped to reduce the number of foreclosed homes being sold. The government refinance program is called Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) and there have been many homeowners that have completed the home loan modification with success. The home loan can have earned principal forgiveness, lowered interest rates, and extended repayment terms all in an effort to lower the monthly payment to less that 31 percent of a homeowner’s income.
By: Victoria Brown
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