High housing prices across the Central Coast

Housing prices are climbing across the Central Coast and homes that are available are selling fast.

Newly released numbers show the median price of a home is nearly $474,000.

“It is pretty normal to see families get upset about that you know and get frustrated over the fact that everything is more expensive including housing. The cost of living is going up everywhere,” said Salinas based real estate agent Jose Mancera.

Mancera told KION he spends much of his time trying to find affordable homes for his clients. He said a modern four bedroom home located in East Salinas would have sold for around $250,000 about two years ago. Now, the same home is going for $475,000.

According to the State Board of Equalization, the median price for a home in Monterey County is $487,000.

In Santa Cruz, buyers will find average priced homes going for about $740,000 and the homes don’t stay on the market long.

“Sometimes it’s the same day because people know ahead of time that it’s coming on the market, other times it may take a week, 60 days depending on how they priced it,” said Santa Cruz County realtor Randy Turnquist.

Right now, there are only 253 listings in Santa Cruz County compared to 500 last March.

“I’m hoping for it to level out. I’m hoping for more houses to go on the market so that it’s more realistic because right now there are just not enough houses on the market. So I think they can drag up the prices. When there’s a selection of four houses in the 750 thousand dollar range they are going too fast so people are bidding way over asking price and making it an unrealistic market,” said Santa Cruz County resident Amiee Leyva.

So will these prices ever go down?

“No, but we’ve said that before and they always take a dip, maybe a big dip. In 2009 they took a huge dip so I don’t have a crystal ball but I don’t see it happening drastically again,” said Randy Turnquist.