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| Shoppers camped out for three days in January at the
Twilight ridge housing development in west Quartz Hill,
said Susan Bolin, new home consultant and saleswoman for
parent company Greystone Homes Inc. On the west side of
Palmdale, builders Skyline, Beazer, Harris and Forecast
are putting up homes in the Rancho vista development.
Beazer and Forecast are ready to pull permits to build
310 homes on lots in the area of 25th and 30th streets
west and Avenue P-8, according to Laurie Lyle, city
planning director. The tentative map of the development
was approved some time ago and the sales models have been
OK'd by the city, she said. |
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| Existing home sales are equally buoyant. Realtors
often receive several offers on homes for sale, usually
within a couple of weeks of listing, said Dana Haycock,
immediate past president of the Greater Antelope
Association of Realtors. "The market is very
active," she said. "Prices are going up all the
time for well-priced, good houses. Buyers are actually
pushing the prices up, often bidding $3,000 to $4,000
above the list price of an existing home, she said. |
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| "We live in the most affordable part of
California," she said. While Victorville and
California City also have good prices on real estate, the
Valley is closer to Los Angeles, which makes property
here more desirable to many, Haycock said. The California
Association of Realtors reported the Palmdale-Lancaster
area was the most affordable place in the state in April,
with 67% of the households there able to quality for a
median-priced home mortgage in April. However, that
figure was down from 68% in March and in April of last
year, the CAR reported. |
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| People hunting for homes are driven to aim for
regions like the Valley, said Gretchen Gutierrez, acting
director of the Building Industry Association in the
Valley. "Los Angeles County, Orange County, the
(South) Bay area, Ventura County - all the surrounding
neighborhoods continue to price a number of people out of
the market," she said. |
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| When the median price of a California home topped
$300,000 in April and $285,000 for a home in the southern
part of the state, homes selling for closer to $200,000
in the Valley started to look good, Gutierrez said. The
CAR predicts a tough summer for those in search of a
chunk of real estate. "Low inventory, favorable
mortgage interest rates and rapidly rising home price
appreciation will continue to intensify the pace of home
sales in the coming months," said Leslie
Appleton-Young, CAR chief economist. CAR reported a
two-month inventory of unsold single-family homes in
April, half the number available in April 2001. Sales of
existing homes in the state rose by nearly 30% compared
to the same time a year ago, with prices jumping more
than 26%, CAR reported. Only 32% of California households
could afford to buy a home in January 2002 compared to
35% in January 2001, the association reported in March.
Nationwide, 57% can afford to buy a home, a figure that
held steady from last year. The figure suggest California
may be the most desirable and least available domicile in
the United States. "There simply isn't enough
inventory available to meet the demand for homes,"
said Robert Bailey, CAR president. |
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| It is not a new story for the state. Throughout the
1990s, its housing growth of 9.2% didn't keep pace with
demands from a population that was growing by 13.8%,
according to a Public Policy Institute of California
publication released in May called California Counts.
"This is in contrast to the rest of the nation,
where housing growth was slightly greater than population
growth," the publication said. |
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| Permits issued for construction of new houses in the
Antelope Valley indicate the building boom will continue
to gain speed. In the first four months of 2002 compared
to the first four months of 2001, permits issued in the
unincorporated areas of the Valley rose by 76% (from 25
to 44); in Palmdale , they were up 23.8% (from 235 to
291), and they held steady in Lancaster, gaining less
than 1% (from 126 to 127). The overall increase in the
Valley was nearly 20% (from 386 to 462), according to
figures from the Construction Industry Research Board.
Approximate values for home construction in those periods
rose 75% outside the cities, 22.4% in Palmdale and 7.2%
in Lancaster, for an overall increase from the first four
months of 2001 of 30.5%. Building costs in the Valley are
around $100 per square foot, Gutierrez said, compared to
about $200 a square foot in larger cities in the state. |
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| Developments like Twilight Ridge highlight the demand
in the Valley. The homes range in size from 2,300 to
3,200 square feet with four to six bedrooms, Bolin said.
Prices start about $205,000 and top out at $260,000.
Although the cost is somewhat high for the Antelope
Valley, where the average home costs $130,000, that
doesn't seem to be discouraging buyers. Sales have been
good enough that Greystone may start another phase
although additional land would be needed. Bolin is
expecting a decision to be made this Summer. |
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