Financial

The fast-paced, competitive nature of this spring's Bay Area housing market has participants and observers alike speculating on the reasons -- particularly after three years of severe job losses.

There is no single factor motivating buyers. But experts and anecdotal evidence suggest that the current home-buying fever is fueled primarily by low interest rates and by current homeowners trading up to better homes, especially in better school districts. And spring is typically the most popular time to buy, particularly for families with school-age children.

Other reasons include the limited supply of resale homes on the market -- only about half as many are for sale as at this time last year -- along with the state's growing population. All of this is compounded by the overall shortage of homes that has plagued Silicon Valley for years. Via Mercury News

Blue Skies and Green Yards, All Lost to Red Ink
By MICHAEL MOSS and ANDREW JACOBS

Ethel Davis first glimpsed her luminous future in 1997 when she saw a television ad that offered a vision of a green, secure world that had seemed hopelessly out of reach.

"Why Rent?" asked the ad for a home builder in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. "Our goal is homeownership for you and your family. Every American wants it; every American deserves it."

And so, with the ad's irresistible kicker, "The only thing you have to lose is your landlord," ringing in her ears, she did what thousands of her neighbors, many of them middle-income blacks and Hispanics from New York City, did. She took the interstate west, lured by the promise of fresh air, good schools and green, gated communities they could never afford closer to home.

It turned out there was more to lose than a landlord. Six years later, after her new house proved far beyond her means and the five-hour daily round trip to her job in New York City sapped her endurance, her marriage has collapsed, the bank is seizing her house and she is back in Brooklyn renting space from a landlord who took pity on her. Via NYTimes.com

For each of the eight largest metro regions tracked by Fiserv Case Shiller Weiss, here are the 10 zip codes with the largest median five-year price increases -- and their prospects for the coming year.

The story

Among the eight largest metro regions tracked by real estate research firm Fiserv CSW, zip codes in and around Los Angeles and Boston saw home values increase the most between 1998 and 2003.

- Posted by Gary Secondino - 1:57:47 PM - trackback []