AGENT MLS HOME FINDER

The Santa Barbara real estate market was for a period of several months one of the strongest in the state of California and even the nation at large. Santa Barbara was hit hard by the initial wave of foreclosures and the early real estate crisis, but that problem in part led to an increased volume of so-called “short sales” and consequently higher home sales in general. That seems to have changed course somewhat, at least according to a September 16, 2009 article in BusinessWeek. According to the piece, written by Chris Palmeri, “For months the big story was how fast California home sales were rebounding as investors snapped up cheap, foreclosed homes. Now the sales and price trends are reversing. In August the number o homes sold fell nearly 11% from July. Last month was the 14th in a row with a year-over-year sales increase, however.”

Further problems for real estate in Santa Barbara were chronicled by a September 18, 2009 article, also in BusinessWeek. The piece, written by Terence Chea, noted that “California home sales tumbled 12 percent from July to August as a shrinking inventory of foreclosure properties and worries about the economy weighted on the market, a real estate tracking firm said. The median home price in August dipped slightly to $249,000, compared with $250,000 in July and $301,000 a year earlier…” There were also significant problems aside from those facing Santa Barbara homes for sale, namely in the commercial sector. According to an October 7, 2009 article from BNet by Barbara Hernandez, “Atlas Hospitality Group, a commercial real estate brokerage in Irvine, Calif. specializing in hotels, reported that in the first nine months of 2009, hotel foreclosures more than tripled…”

This situation is similar to that faced by the United States at large, according to an October 8, 2009 article in Bloomberg. According to the article by Daniel Taub, “Vacancies at US shopping centers rose in the third quarter to a 17-year high as unemployment climbed, consumers cut spending and stores closed, real estate research company Reis Inc. said. Vacancies at neighborhood and community shopping centers increased to 10.3 percent, the highest level since 1992…”