Zen's Blog

History teaches us that homebuyers will only pay so much extra for the frequent charms of Orange County's lifestyle and its often job-creating economy. Look at my "Orange premium" - dividing the median selling price for an Orange County house, as calculated by the National Association of Realtors...

Zippys use DataQuick stats to measure relative neighborhood housing strength by weighing pricing and sales momentum plus foreclosure frequency in Orange County’s 83 ZIP codes. Villa Park, which ranked 2nd out of 83 O.C. ZIPs for the second quarter, was a top-tier performer in all three key catego...

Using DataQuick data for the most recent quarter — 2008’s third, weo rank the 83 ZIPs by price, sales and foreclosure — then determined an overall ranking by finding each ZIPs average ranking. Columnist Jon Lansner’s ranking of O.C.’s 83 ZIP codes by 3 key home-market performance benchmarks: Pri...

California home prices were falling at a 28.85% annual rate in late October, worst decline in the nation, reports First American LoanPerformance. It's the 18th consecutive month that California has taken that dubious honor. Following California was Nevada (-24.54%); Arizona (-20.41%); Florida (-1...

For buyers looking for a "deal" in purchasing a foreclosure, in October, the sales price to list price ratio was 101%. This means, on average, foreclosures sell for over the asking price. The total inventory of foreclosures and short sales increased 5% over the past two weeks to 5,801 houses and ...

An Orange County home is nearly six times as affordable as a year ago - as measured by an index of the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo Bank. Details: Still, just 28.5% of the homes sold in O.C. in the third quarter were affordable to the typical local household. (A year ago,...

The latest O.C. home inventory report from Steve Thomas at Altera Real Estate in Aliso Viejo says that the demand for homes - number of pending deals set within the past month - dropped by 210 homes in the past 2 weeks to 2,463 but it's still +98% vs. 1,241 a year ago (or 2,011 at this time in 20...

Stats from the 22 business days ended Oct. 21 shows that shoppers bought 2,693 Orange County homes. That is 56.3% above the year ago period that was ravaged by a credit crunch that just was hitting home loans. 29 of 83 Orange County ZIP codes - roughly 1-in-3 - saw sales volume double or more in ...

Datquick's first peek at October's Orange County home buying, based on the 22 business days ended October 6 shows a big decline from last years home buying sales price. The median selling price was $420,000 down 27.2 percent versus a year ago and 35 percent below June's 2007 peak of $645,000. The...

The worst climate in housing since the Great Depression has put the economy- and homeownership- in the spotlight. Ohio's Joe the Plumber- whole livelihood is loosely tied to the real estate market- put Democratic hopeful Barack Obama on the defensive about the White House front-runner's tax polic...