In California's housing market, everything is coming up roses this spring -- well, for owners and sellers, at least.

Golden State home buyers may want to get their financial docs in a row and jump down off the fence.

On the heels of Silicon Valley posting a 10 percent, $60,000 month-to-month gain in home prices, beach towns in central and southern California yielded greater percentage gains and statewide, overall year-to-year gains headed for the stratosphere.

It was like the mid-1980s all over again.

From February to March this year, the month-to-month median price on closed sales of single-family homes also jumped nearly $60,000 in both the Monterey Region (up 11.6 percent to $575,550) and Santa Barbara County (up 14.3 percent to $475,000), according to the California Association of Realtors.

Statewide, home prices jumped more than $33,000 or 8.4 percent month-to-month and a whopping 22 percent since last year, leaving the market with a record $428,280 median single-family home price over all. Last year at this time, the median price was $351,130 -- a more than $77,000 difference.

It'll cost California condo buyers a median 25.8 percent more than it did last year, as those prices jumped to $333,620 statewide, representing only a 3.1 percent month-to-month increase.

New record median home prices were posted in the Central Valley, High Desert, Monterey, Monterey County, Northern California, Northern Wine, Orange County, Riverside/San Bernardino, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, North Santa Barbara County and Santa Barbara South Coast regions, CAR said.

All but two regions posted double-digit, year-to-year price gains, with the highest at 38.9 percent in Riverside/San Bernardino, where home prices rose $20,000 in a single-month to a median of $274,660.

Even at the low end, the year-to-year 8 percent home price increase in Santa Barbara County and the 8.3 percent increase in San Luis Obispo were hefty.

The only negative numbers were in month-to-month price dips of 1.3 percent in Los Angeles and 12.8 percent in San Luis Obispo.

"The median price of a home continued its run of double-digit price increases last month as buyers scrambled to purchase homes amid concerns of rising mortgage interest rates," said CAR President Ann Pettijohn.

Freddie Mac reported interest rates just topped 6 percent for the first time this year, after 6 consecutive weeks of rate hikes since the market bottomed at 5.38 percent March 18.

"With financial markets more optimistic that the economy is expanding nicely, mortgage rates had no where to go but up this week," said Amy Crews Cutts, Freddie Mac deputy chief economist.

Low inventories also pushed up prices as California's condo sales sizzled, growing by 41.3 percent from the previous month and by 20.1 percent from last year.

Single-family home sales remained steady month-to-month, rising only 0.2 percent, CAR reported.

"Year-to-date (single-family home) sales are up 4.4 percent compared to the same period last year," said Leslie Appleton-Young, CARs vice president and chief economist.

"Along with the median price of a home, the inventory of homes for sale reached an all-time historic low of 1.6 months in March, while time on the market is at a record low of 26 days," Appleton-Young added.

Published: May 5, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.