There is some good news for people in the business of Santa Cruz real estate. Recent Yahoo! Real Estate statistics show a +1.2% price change in the median price of homes for sale and a weakening rate of foreclosures as the global economic recession that wreaked havoc on the nation begins to subside. As of September 14, 2009, the local median price for single family homes was $742,000. Mortgage rates in the state of California helped to steady the industry. Several real estate moguls have claimed that the midpoint of 2009 has brought the lowest of lows in the real estate industry and that a brighter future is down the road. How far down the road is another question while many believe the market will never return to the status it once held prior to the recession that struck around the world.
On September 18, 2009, staff writer Jondi Gumz of the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that earlier predictions about Santa Cruz homes for sale were fully realized in August. Back in March, a seasoned real estate veteran Mark Hanson “forecast the median would rise during spring and summer with a surge of traditional sales muting foreclosure-related sales, then drop in autumn as seasonal buyers left the market.” True to this concept, Santa Cruz’s median price for a single-family dwelling “inched down to $500,000 in August after climbing $100,000 in the previous five months. Popular opinion claims that the summer housing boom helped to prevent Santa Cruz’s real estate prices from falling to all-time lows. Many also claim that government stimuli and “servicers keeping foreclosures off the market” have helped to bolster property prices.
These updates show a radical change from the real estate situation in the area a year earlier. According to an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel written on September 19, 2008, the median for a single-family home was $582,000, down from $770,000 in August 2007. In the previous year, according to Scotts Valley real estate agent Nick Vrolyk, real estate in Santa Cruz experienced significant foreclosure rates due to “very creative loans that should never have been allowed.”
