HollisterFreelance.com | SBC Home Prices Steady in January

SBC Home Prices Steady in January

Feb 6, 2007
By Anthony Ha

Hollister - Local home prices held steady in January, but prices remain far below where they were a year ago.

Twenty-nine San Benito County homes were sold last month, with a median price of $589,000, according to REInfoLink, a real estate database that tracks home sales. In January 2006, when 31 homes sold, the median price was $669,000.

Home prices fell throughout most of 2006, reaching a monthly low of $539,000 in November. Pri-ces have in-creased since then, but local real estate agents said there hasn't been a significant upswing in the market.

"I don't think things have changed at all in the last two or three months," said Dee Brown, a broker associate with ReMax Platinum Properties. "It's been real stable."

Home sellers are also waiting longer for deals to close. Homes sold in the first month of 2006 were on the market for an average of 57 days, while homes sold in January 2007 were on the market for an average of 89 days.

Jack Markle, a broker associate with Coldwell Banker, estimated that most homes are now selling for between 10 and 20 percent less than their value last year.

Markle said one factor dragging down the market average is the slowdown in the sales of expensive homes. Most of the sales activity, he said, has been in homes priced between $550,000 and $700,000.

Markle added that although prices have been moving downward over the past year, there are reasons to believe the market may be picking up shortly. Markle said he's seen more activity at open houses and received more telephone calls in recent weeks. He said a number of other indicators - including the employment rate, the consumer price index and the housing market in Santa Clara County - are also pointing upward.

Conventional wisdom, Brown said, calls for post-holiday improvement in the market, with February, March and April being the best months of the year.

"But if we look at the trends, I don't know if the numbers actually show that," she said.

The most expensive San Benito County home sold in January went for just less than $1.2 million. It's a four-bedroom, 2,800-square-foot house on five acres with a barn and corrals. The least expensive home was a one-bedroom, 800-square-foot house - a "fixer-upper," in Brown's words - that went for $345,000.

Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or aha@freelancenews.com.

Anthony Ha
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or aha@freelancenews.com.