Western Locales Draw Buyers
While East Coast Sales Slow

Here's a look at what's new in real-estate markets across the U.S. from around the Web. (Some links may require registration or subscriptions.)

Investors pan for gold in California desert

The cooling Southern California housing market has sent real-estate investors somewhere hotter -- into the Mojave Desert, says the Los Angeles Times. In the hopes that the value of the vacant desert land will appreciate significantly in the next few years and that home builders will flow into the region, some speculators are buying up acres of empty parcels in places like Newberry Springs, Calif., where $15.6 million in real estate was sold last year, almost seven times the amount spent on real estate there in 2000. For instance, the paper recounts the adventures of one Egyptian-born pediatrician who has borrowed approximately $400,000 against his Southern California residence to purchase property in the Newberry Springs area. "They're looking for hidden gems, overlooked things," the paper quotes one real-estate analyst as saying about such speculators.

Sellers get creative in Connecticut

Faced with slowing home sales and elusive home buyers, home sellers in Connecticut are using a variety of incentives to draw attention to their properties, says the New York Times. At the end of July, data showed that median home prices were still rising, but sales of single-family homes had dropped 13% across the state for the first seven months of this year. The biggest drop in sales was in Fairfield County, with a 20% decrease through July of this year. Builders like Baker Residential are using tactics like offering free home-selling seminars in an attempt to attract potential buyers to a new residential development it is building in Bethel, Conn. But it's not only buyers who are being offered such freebies -- across the state, attractive offers are being dangled in front of real-estate agents to drum up traffic for languishing for-sale listings. One plastic surgeon is touting free Botox treatments for the agent who sells his home, while a real-estate agent is offering to throw in an African safari for the agent who secures a buyer for her Wilton, Conn., property.

Bargain hunters in Utah

Inventory of homes for sale are increasing across the U.S., but in Utah County, Utah, housing inventory in August was actually 14% lower than it was two years ago, says a Daily Herald article. In August, the median single-family home price rose more than 20% to $198,650 from a year ago, the newspaper says. August's price increase is significantly higher than the 2.3% annual appreciation in home prices seen in the state from 1999 through 2005, the article says. In August, Saratoga Springs, which is close to major employment centers, saw the biggest year-over-year median sales-price jump, 42%, the paper says. Recent news reports citing the state as one of the most undervalued real-estate markets in the U.S. may be behind the area's booming housing market, the paper says, attracting investors from more expensive states like California, Nevada and Arizona.

Thinking globally to spur sales in Florida

Crippled by dwindling home sales, skyrocketing property taxes and insurance rates and the threat of hurricanes, more and more Southwest Florida real-estate agents are focusing their attention overseas to attract home buyers. In fact, almost 60% of buyers of the state's real estate already hail from Europe, the Herald Tribune says. Between May 2004 and May 2005, foreigners paid a median of $299,000 for Florida homes, whereas domestic buyers spent a median of $196,200, the Tribune says. But the very factors that are making area homes less attractive to U.S. buyers -- namely rising property tax rates and the risk of hurricanes -- are softening European interest in Southwest Florida property as well, the newspaper says.

California's record drop in home sales

In August 2005, a record 652 homes sold in Merced, Calif., located east of San Jose, according to an article posted by MercedSunStar.com. Compare that to last August, where about half of that number were sold -- 369 houses, the Web site says. In fact, in August, California had the biggest year-over-year drop in homes sales since the 1980s -- 30% the article says. Cited as one reason behind the decrease is the mass exodus of real-estate investors who had helped fuel the area's housing boom, which had peaked in August 2005, the paper reports. One real-estate analyst quoted in the article says that as the market corrects, local housing prices could fall by as much as 35%

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