As we enter into April, 2011, we are not seeing to many gains or climbs in the housing prices of Orange County or any surrounding cities.  Mostly, home prices have stabilized and there has been some increases in consumer buying power, possibly from the previous government leveraging and improvements in the home loan and mortgage sectors.  So there are more customers out there, hunting for good deals and undervalued homes, but that is also part of the current stale environment.

A majority of these new buyers are expecting ridiculous deals, and pressuring the home prices to go lower and devalue the economy more.  Although this is not necessarily there intention, the previous 3 years combined with current income levels and wealth, sellers are taking a beating trying to get a “decent deal”. We need a serious pickup for our local economy and income levels to really push a surge for consumer buying power for O.C. property.

So we have seen increased buying power vs. our current “2003″ pricing of residential homes throughout Orange County, but we have not seen a major increase in converting that into sales because the buyers are looking to absolutely kill sellers and devalue homes further.

Part of the major problem with our current state is this :

“Our supposed “Stabilized employment picture” is up from a loss of 75,000 jobs in 2009 to gain of 6,500 jobs, in ’10. Unemployment rate in December 2010 was 8.9 percent, vs. 9.5 percent a year before.”

Pretty obvious that we need at least 70,000+ jobs at this point to stimulate the economy of Orange County back to near 2007 or 08′ levels.  Until we see those jobs filling the picture and the average incomes of local residents picking back up, homeowners will struggle to sell properties or to just get positive on their home loans that are underwater after the bubble.