Real Estate Breakdown

An unincorporated community in Santa Cruz, the community of Aptos, California, has seen, like many cities across the nation, a dent put into its housing market over the past two years. With the onset of the recession across the U.S. home prices here, like elsewhere, fell, while foreclosures rose and inventory began stockpiling.

Because Aptos is a rather small community, it can be difficult to extrapolate reliable information from its housing statistics. For example, at the end of the year in December 2009, according to the Santa Cruz Association of Realtors information, the average and median price of home sold was $525,000. Upon further scrutiny, however, we can see that there was only one home sold in December – for a price of $525,000. Meanwhile, there were two new homes listed in December for a total of five homes on the market, with each home spending an average of 4.8 months listed before being sold.

Looking back to November, statistics show that there were two Aptos homes for sale closed upon, with an average and median price of $456,000. During that month, there were seven homes on the market, spending an average of just 2.6 months listed before selling.

Some earlier statistics from November of 2008 show that despite the minimal information, the Aptos real estate has improved since the worst days during the crisis. In November 2008, there was one closed home sale, which had a price of almost $238,000, much lower than the prices seen in the last few months of 2009. Based on this information, it would be logical to say the market has seen its bottom and is now on its way back up.