On the other side of the coin, first-time home buyers here faced one of the least affordable markets in the state in the third quarter of this year.
Rising prices put homes out of reach of almost half of Santa Clara County's potential first-time buyers during the third quarter of 2009, according to a report from the California Association of Realtors.
The Realtors group pegged the valley's "affordability index" for single-family homes at 53 percent, five percentage points lower than the previous quarter. The third-quarter data means that only 53 percent of the valley's potential first-time buyers could afford a home. That compares with 64 percent statewide.
The drop in affordability "means your prices are going up," said Steve Goddard, president-elect of the association. But statewide, affordability has increased, he noted, partly as a function of lower interest rates.
It's still a marked improvement from a year ago, when only 41 percent of would-be first-time buyers could afford a home in the valley.
In the third quarter of this year, the Realtors group said, the valley's first-time
buyers faced a median entry-level price of $481,100 for a single-family home, with an estimated monthly payment of $2,820 and a requisite annual income of $84,600.
The median price statewide is $247,150, the association said, with a minimum requisite income of $43,500 — a 19 percent drop from the annual income needed to buy a home last year.
Meanwhile, the number of foreclosures in the valley and California are "bobbling around" from month to month, according to Sean O'Toole of ForeclosureRadar, while the number in "foreclosure limbo" increases.
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Actual foreclosures, in which homes are either sold to third parties or taken back by banks, were up in October from the previous month, but sharply down from October 2008. But there doesn't seem to be a clear trend in foreclosures at this point, O'Toole said, despite the monthly jump.
The Obama administration's foreclosure prevention programs, which offer incentives to banks to modify loans, reported Tuesday that 134,609 mortgages have been modified in California since the program began in March — the highest number for any state. Yet the banks don't seem to be canceling many foreclosure sales, O'Toole said.
"I expected to see some results in canceling foreclosures, but we have yet to see it," O'Toole said.
