“Home sales in the Bay Area fell for the 24th month in a row in January as prices slipped to their lowest level in a year and a half, a real estate information service reported Thursday. A total of 6,168 new and resale houses and condos sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was down 26.3 percent from 8,372 in December, and down 4.1 percent from 6,434 for January last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems. A decline from December to January is normal for the season. Sales last month were the lowest for any January since 1996 when 5,504 homes were sold.”

“Rising defaults in the market for sub-prime mortgages have claimed another victim: Brea-based ResMAE Mortgage Corp. said Tuesday that it had filed for Bankruptcy Court protection. Separately, Santa Monica-based sub-prime lender Fremont General Corp. said it no longer would offer second mortgages to home buyers who need to borrow their down payment. The sub-prime market — loans to people with bad credit, high debt loads or other risk factors — has been rocked in recent days by news that more borrowers are having trouble making their payments. Last week, Irvine-based New Century Financial Corp. said it would have to restate earnings for 2006 because of losses tied to sub-prime mortgage defaults… ResMAE is at least the 20th mortgage company to be sold or closed as delinquencies rise and the market for home loans to high-risk borrowers contracts.”

The California Association of Realtors is suing Blue Shield of California, claiming the health insurance provider canceled its members’ coverage without proper cause. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, stems from a dispute that arose in December, when Blue Shield sent the association a letter notifying that it would not renew coverage for about 5,500 realtors and their families – about 8,000 people – after the association’s current contract with the health insurer expires May 31. Blue Shield’s reason for this action was because the number of members signed up for coverage had fallen below a set threshold required under their contract with the association. The association also filed an injunction seeking to stop Blue Shield from dropping coverage for its members. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for next month.

“The housing slowdown hit KB Home as charges and price concessions piled up to bring a fourth quarter loss for the Los Angeles homebuilder. For the quarter, KB Home recorded a loss of $49.6 million, or 64 cents a share, including $343.3 million in charges related to inventory and joint venture impairments, as well as the abandonment of land option contracts.”

“Selling houses was easy money when the market was hot. Now, some agents in the Inland Empire are trying to cash in on foreclosures.”

The Housing Bubble Blog quotes The American Stateman: “The number of Californians who moved into Hays, Travis and Williamson counties in 2005 jumped 32 percent from the previous year, and real estate agents helping many of the transplants buy homes here said the numbers did not decline in 2006.”

“Stephanie and John Landers moved from the Laguna Beach area of California to Austin with their two young sons in February 2005, leaving behind a bluff-top home overlooking the Pacific Ocean. ‘Everybody made a lot of money on real estate out there, but it’s kind of like golden handcuffs,’ Stephanie Landers said. ‘If you don’t leave the state, you can’t move anywhere else.’”

“The tremendous amount of money from real estate gains coming out of California helps explain why this relatively small group is often blamed or credited for rising housing prices in Central Texas, even though the majority of California transplants have median incomes no higher than those in the areas into which they are moving.”

“(Realtor) John Rosshirt said California buyers are accustomed to much higher home prices and generally are prepared to pay more than buyers from Texas. This has a ripple effect on the market, Rosshirt said, because buyers who lose out on one house to a California buyer with a higher bid often are willing to pay more the next time.”

Google has been buying real estate throughout the world- usually in cool climates with cheap electricity- for planned and potential server farms. A report in the Charlotte Observer describes how Google works in conjunction with politicians and economic development officials to both persuade and cajole people into selling their homes and land.

Realtors and the National Association of Realtors have been repeatedly wrong in predicting that the California Housing Market has “bottomed out”, according to the HouseFalls.com blog:

Why is California so important? Simple, according to the article “one out of every nine people in America” lives here…. With tightening lending standars on the way – the question is really how will people who can’t afford their ARMS when they mature qualify for a refinance of their homes. Simple answer, they won’t – and will likely lose their homes. With all of this news, it’s interesting that Realtors, and the National Association of Realtors (NAR), are saying that the market has already bottomed.

Hello false hopes campaign. If we’ve seen the bottom, why are things just getting worse? Oh, but I’m forgetting – they said the market had bottomed last month, and the month before, and the month before … Isn’t it high time someone calls B.S. on them? How about if any of us buys a house, and it loses equity because of the market – the NAR will refund us the difference?

The Daily Kos blog has weighed in on the California housing market, mostly with an analysis of the recent California Association of Realtors survey. It winds it up by saying: “Now, I know that many of you (outside of California) might be a little stunned that the median price of a home for first-time buyers was $450,000. In San Francisco that might get you a studio sitting alongside the freeway. It’s truly that absurd. Also, I think it’s important to link together a few of these points. You have the first decline in median net cash gain in 10 years. The first decline in median down payments in 12 years. 20 percent of all homes being purchased with no down payment. The median price increased dropped from 14 to 2 percent in one year. You do the math.”

“There could be trouble ahead in California’s housing market as buyers are going deeper into debt while sellers are seeing less profit, according to a survey. More than 21 percent of buyers last year took out zero-down-payment mortgages, soaring from just 4.5 percent in 2000, according to the California Association of Realtors, the industry’s trade group.”

First American Corp, of Santa Ana has acquired a mortgage-fraud detection company: CoreLogic Systems Inc. of Sacramento for more than 100 million dollars. First American Corp is the country’s largest provider of business information, including title insurance, specialty insurance, mortgage information and property information.

It may be closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, but the California Legislature has begun considering restrictions on unorthodox mortgage-lending practices. About half of all new home loans in California are something other than the traditional 30-year fixed loan and this has allowed hundreds of thousands of Californians to buy homes they otherwise could not afford. The loans use features such as no money down and variable interest rates in exchange for higher bills that kick in years later. Regulators said many of those riskier loans were taken out in 2004 and 2005 and will start resetting to higher rates this year. Some areas of the State have already experience an increase in mortgage defaults as a result of these unconventional loans.

“The number of Californians defaulting on their mortgage loans is rising rapidly, according to figures released Tuesday, providing striking evidence that more people are at risk of losing their homes.”

A growing number of Koreans are scooping up real estate in the United States and elsewhere after the overseas investment cap in their country was lifted. Koreans are expected to invest nearly $2 billion in U.S. residential property in 2007, up from $1.27 billion in 2005 when such investments were mostly limited to large Korean corporations, said Brian Shaffer of the International Real Estate Trade Organization. Worldwide, Koreans could spend at least $4 billion on overseas homes in 2007 as a result of the changes made in May that allow an individual to make as much as $1 million in foreign investments, analysts said. Many of the purchases are being prompted by the strength of South Korean currency – the won, pronounced like “one” in English – against other currencies, analysts said.