Most of the United States is still reeling from the ups and downs, mostly downs, of the real estate market of the past few years. Yet, in Los Angeles there is a growing optimism that the real estate market will be picking up and will continue to go up as the summer approaches and more people thing about relocating.
One indicator of good things to come in the Los Angeles real estate realm is a definite drop in the number of homes which are worth less than the balance of their mortgages. At the end of March there were about 10.9 million such homes, compared to December of 2010 when there were 11.1 million homes “underwater.”
The decline in the number of homes underwater was not caused by home prices rising, which they haven’t, but instead by more underwater homes being bought out of foreclosure, thus taking those underwater homes off the market. According to economist Sam Khater of CoreLogic in Santa Ana, “We are treading water.”