L.A. Times AND Daily News say home prices are up...

Our local papers are reporting that housing prices posted gains for the third month in a row. On a year-to-year basis from August 2008, our total decline is now a statistical 12% for L.A. I don't think this has to do with the $8k credit. Rather, I think it's because of historically low interest rates and very short inventory.

Happy 4th!

Have a safe and happy holiday.

Spikes at 10862 Bloomfield, Toluca Lake

This is 10862 Bloomfield in Toluca Lake. This 22-unit building was built in 2006. It has three short sales and two foreclosures on the market -- at least it did until this week. One foreclosure has been listed since December for $317,900. It sold over full price last week with cash multiple offers. No surprise, that's a pretty low price. The second foreclosure has just been listed for a couple weeks at $355,500. It is on the same floor as the first foreclosure and has the same features, size, etc. It has also sold with multiple offers and may close (depending on variables including the appraisal) as high as $370,000!

There's two ways to look at this. The first way is the foreclosures-have-halved-local-equity way: that's a lot of foreclosures/short sales for condos that originally sold for $600,000-$800,000. The second way is the market-is-rebounding way: that's quite a sales price increase for two essentially-the-same units in the same building (I've seen several units in this building).

The short sales are comparably priced, too, but as we all know, short sale offers are difficult to get accepted.