In last week’s data feature we took a look at how the California market started out the year in terms of closings activity.  This week, with the Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC) just days away at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, we decided to take a look at home prices during the first quarter for states on the Pacific coast, courtesy of data from Housing IntelligencePro.  While we found out last week that activity in the regular resale market, excluding bank-owned properties, held up the best, median home prices in the category did not follow suit.  In surprisingly consistent manner, both regular resales and distressed REO sales saw price declines compared to a year earlier in all three states.  Further, each of these states also saw an increase in median price in new home closings.  Have builders found a way to win in the west?  Based upon the weak volume, that’s probably optimistic, but resilient pricing does suggest home builders are finding ways to differentiate their products from the other offerings in the marketplace.

With the Pacific Coast Builders Conference coming up in less than two weeks on June 22 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, we decided it would be appropriate to take a lok at housing stats for the state of California in our data feature this week, courtesy of Housing IntelligencePro.  Overall, total closings in the first quarter for California are down about 6% from the same period last year.  Regular resales, which make up the largest portion of total activity in the state, held up the best while the new homes market experienced the steepest pullback.  Existing home closings, excluding sales of bank-owned properties, accounted for almost 52% of all closings during the first quarter and increased roughly 1% compared to the same period last year.  New home closings, which made up just a little less than 5% of all housing activity during the first three months of the year, experienced a 30% drop in activity from the same year-ago period.  REO sales were about 43.5% of all home closings in the first quarter and fell 10% from year-ago levels.
 

With the release of our Market Snapshots covering the first quarter of the year, three southern metro areas rise to the top of the ranks in different categories.  McAllen, TX leads our top 75 markets in job growth, rising at an annual rate of 3.4%.  Cross-border commerce with Mexico, tourism, and the health care industry continue to drive the expansion in McAllen.  In terms of permit activity, Port St. Lucie, FL saw permit issuances nearly quadruple over the last year, rising from very low levels in 2009 and early 2010 when construction activity all but halted.  The resumption of expansion in permit issuance is welcome news for the local construction industry.  Finally, Huntsville, AL leads our top 75 markets when it comes to our Housing Growth Ratio, which measures the number of permits issued per 1,000 residents.  This expression of supply is a good indicator of how quickly a market is expanding relative to the number of people living there.  In Huntsville’s case, they’ve issued 5.77 permits per 1,000 residents over the last year, a pace not matched by any other metro area in our list of top 75 markets for which we publish Market Snapshots.
 

Housing remains stuck in the doldrums even with extremely low mortgage rates and despite some improvement in private payroll employment.  Part of the reason for this disconnect is the slew of foreclosures and bank-owned properties which are still flooding the housing market.  Defaults are expected to reach new record-highs this year which have buyers holding out for better deals and traditional home-sellers battling low-ball offers from banks.  The aggressive pricing on distressed properties is undercutting individual home sellers and new home builders alike, and wreaking havoc on local housing markets.  According to data from Housing IntelligencePro, both new home activity and regular resale activity made up a smaller portion of total closing activity compared to the first three months of last year (and every quarter since).

As the national economy continued to slowly come back to life residential permit issuance lost its footing in the first quarter of 2011.  According to the 1st Quarter 2011 Edition of the newly released Flash Report, activity in the single-family segment was 22% below the level seen during the same period last year.  The current pace of 90,400 detached homes permitted during the quarter was 26,000 permits below the year ago pace.  As the for-rent apartment market continues to heat up in response to steadying job growth, multifamily permit issuance has continued to trend upward.