FRIDAY - pack the essentials
- Trulia's 'Heat Map' Is A Fascinating Look Into Urban America's Real Estate Market
- Bay Area home sales strong: Median price close to record high
- More expect home values to continue rising
- In Silicon Valley, even mobile homes are getting too pricey for longtime residents
- Realtor website surveys homebuyer preferences
- Try Dimensional Tile for a Designed Look
Enjoy!
Trulia's 'Heat Map' Is A Fascinating Look Into Urban America's Real Estate Market - There's a very precise formula for how major U.S. metro areas can make their housing markets “hot”; simply commit to jobs and population growth, then artificially restrain the housing supply. This has been the price inflation calculus in New York and San Francisco. But even within these and other desirable metros, the price variation across the geographic landscape is so disperse as to seem random--and counters the stereotypes about where consumers actually want to locate.
Bay Area home sales strong: Median price close to record high - The Bay Area’s housing supply may be low, but fierce competition among spring-season buyers continued to drive up home prices, which reached record highs in March in Santa Clara and Alameda counties. The typical single-family home cost $1,050,000 in Santa Clara County, up 11.5 percent from a year earlier. In Alameda County, the median price tag jumped 13.5 percent to $772,000.
More expect home values to continue rising - Residents in the western region of the U.S. are the most optimistic, with nearly three-quarters of residents saying they expect price increases compared to slightly more than half of Midwestern and Eastern residents, according to the Gallup poll. With mortgage rates sitting below 4 percent, consumers may have more incentive to act now before home prices rise even more.
In Silicon Valley, even mobile homes are getting too pricey for longtime residents - The most recent tech boom created staggering job growth in the region, with real estate brokers estimating that firms such as Google and Apple now occupy around nine times the amount of land they did in 2005. The expansion of companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Microsoft — along with the tens of thousands of employees they attract — has also significantly increased demand for real estate in the area.
Realtor website surveys homebuyer preferences - According to the survey, all age groups are looking for some combination of a back yard, garage and updated kitchen. Younger home buyers who are more likely to have young children want to find a home with a large yard and located in a good school district.
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