By Nef Cortez

The housing market continues to steam ahead at a strong pace with upward trends in appreciation of values.  The California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) updated their projections for sales in 2018 statewide and their revision included an increased number of home sales as well as an accelerated price appreciation. Much of the anticipated price appreciation is due to the continuing shortage of inventory.

The City of Diamond Bar has within its city boundaries a little more than 15,000 Single Family Residences (SFRs).  Owners of these homes have cumulatively gained over one Billion dollars in equity in the last twelve months due to price appreciation.  C.A.R. reported that in February 2017, the median sales price of SFRs sold in Diamond Bar was $687,944.00. That number had increased to $764,000.00 in February 2018. That represented a median increase of value of approximately $76,000.00 per unit. The lower sampling of transactions on a monthly basis gives us a picture that fluctuates more than the quarter by quarter comparisons, which are more stable. Both numbers, however, have shown an increase year over year.

The growth in equity is a reason why you hear many more commercials or advertising about home equity loans and how you can use your home equity to pay off credit cards and other high interest rate loans. In many cases, it does make sense to borrow on the equity of the home, where one can obtain interest rates of 4.5%. That is much lower than many credit card accounts that are running anywhere from 9.9% to 28%. The danger of borrowing against the equity of the home and paying down credit cards is the ease in which the credit card balance can quickly be accumulated again.

The benefit of having the option to do so is largely due to the gain in property values, as noted above, of more than $1 billion in one year alone! Nice to have!

This article was written by Nef Cortez who is a licensed Real Estate Broker, Ca BRE # 00560181, licensed since 1976. He can be reached for more information via e-mail at nefcortez@gmail.com, or websitewww.nefcortez.com. Please feel free to email any questions regarding real estate.