California housing surge bodes well for Colorado

Droves of people moving from California to Colorado helped pull the Denver area out of its housing slump in the early 1990s, following the boom and the bust in the energy markets of the mid-1980s.

California, again, could come to the rescue of Denver’s housing market.
“One positive sign for Denver and the state of Colorado, is the state of California,” Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, told me this morning. Yun is in Denver to address  the 2009 Realtors Rally at the Colorado Convention Center at 1:45 p.m. today.

“California is seeing a tremendous increase in the number of home sales,” Yun said. “As California goes, nearby states start to pick up that energy. So while sales are rising slowly, at some point down the road, Californians may decide to move out of their  homes there and seek less expensive housing markets, such as Colorado.”

So how much have California sales increased?

Sales were up 83 percent in March from March 2008, according to the California Association of Realtors. Apparently consumers are taking advantage of low mortgage rates to buy homes in California. Overall prices for homes closed in March were down 40.8 percent from a year earlier.