Cash-rich: Home sales are now routinely above asking prices in California, from wealthy Orange County towns like Irvine to harder-hit San Bernardino County in the high desert, east of Los Angeles
Postponed foreclosures create a backlog that banks may dump onto the market
On the surface, a glimmer of confidence is returning to the battered US housing market, after more than three years of gut-wrenching defaults, price slumps and foreclosures.
But investors and homeowners in California, the most populous US state and a benchmark for housing across the country, are bracing for another fall as emergency government support measures fall short or expire.
‘All that has been achieved is to put off the real pain until later on,’ said Mark Jacques, a mortgage broker in Corona Del Mar, California. ‘I’m hunkering down for the storm.’
California led the United States when housing prices soared early this decade, spurred by an array of public policy incentives to encourage home ownership. The boom fuelled a frenzy of lending and spending that drove the US economy. Continue reading
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