Almost every corner of the Bay Area is poised for robust home-price  appreciation this year in a surge that will outpace projected national growth,  according to a forecast from real-estate information site Zillow.com.

Looking at 245 Bay Area ZIP codes, Zillow projects that 244 will see home  values ratchet up by significant margins in 2013, with 27 ZIPs

Turnaround trends continued apace in the Bay Area housing market last month with the strongest January sales in six years and the tenth straight year-over-year increase in the median sale price, a real estate information service reported.

A total of 5,501 new and resale houses and condos were sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was down 28.4

If California is a setter of future real estate trends -- as it has been in the past -- a report that foreclosures in the Golden State fell to the lowest level since 2006 is good news for the entire nation. According to San Diego-based DataQuick, the number of California homeowners pushed into the foreclosure process fell last quarter to the lowest level in

The City of Santa Cruz and Code for America, a national nonprofit that uses talented web professionals to improve government services, are proud to announce the public launch of OpenCounter,  an online small business permitting system.

Designed and developed throughout 2012, OpenCounter reduces the confusion of starting a business by creating an online

If you're looking for the source of this year's home price recovery, look West.

Western cities are recovering strongly after being hit hardest during the real
estate bust. The trend was confirmed Tuesday with the release of the
Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of 20 large cities. The index
was down 0.1% in October from September but up 4.3% compared with

Inside Scoop: Ice Cream and Conversation with the Santa Cruz City Council Candidates

Santa Cruz NEXT, Cruzio Internet, Civinomics, and Santa Cruz Geeks are joining forces to hold a ice cream social with the Santa Cruz City Council candidates. 

Come mix and mingle with the candidates over drinks and ice cream on Wednesday, September 19th from 6 to 9 pm

Median home prices went down and home sales enjoyed a slight rise for the whole of California, according to recently reported figures from DataQuick, a research company based in San Diego. This was attributed to the increase of distressed home sales around the San Francisco area and real estate investors in Southern California.

According to DataQuick's

Residential property prices the US decreased again in the fourth quarter of 2011 and few areas are likely to see increases in 2012, according to the latest data from Zillow.

It's latest Home Value Index fell 1.1% but there were less significant declines in the previous two quarters and overall the drop in 2011 was 4.7%.

Zillow predicts that home values will

Home sales in Santa Cruz County in December were brisk as median price, the midpoint of what sold, was $475,000, remaining less than $500,000 for 11 of the past 12 months. The figures come from Gary Gangnes of Real Options Realty, who noted the December volume was up 24 percent from a year ago. It was the highest since 2004, when the boom was on and the

Has the U.S. housing market hit a bottom? Do we have further to go? When will a recovery start? These are the questions every homeowner and real estate investor are currently asking themselves - or should be.

Wall Street firms have optimistically been betting that the bottom's here. Research firms like Zelman & Associates predict the sector will pick up this

SANTA CRUZ --" The median sales price for a single-family home in Santa Cruz County in September was $490,000, the same as in August. The median, which is the midpoint of what sold, has topped $500,000 only one month this year unlike last year, when the median topped half a million for most of the year.

There were 145 sales in September, about the same as a

U.S. home prices may get a boost from an unlikely source: a pickup in sales of properties in default before they reach the stage where they are repossessed by the bank and sold. There has been a "dramatic shift" in banks' willingness to sell a property for less than the mortgage balance to avoid foreclosing, said Ron Peltier, chairman and chief executive

In a survey by Coldwell Banker Real Estate, results found that 9 out of 10 brokers said "the economy is delaying baby boomers' plans to sell their homes, compared to a few years ago."

The big issue is the huge number of foreclosures we are seeing. Jim Gillespie, CEO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate said it really depends on how long it will take to work

The time is limited for homeowners who want to ensure they aren't hit with a big tax bill because they had to walk away from a mortgage obligation.

At the height of the housing crisis, when foreclosures across the country began a troubling increase, Congress passed the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, designed to provide at least some

 If the Obama administration really wants to save the housing market, it should speed up the foreclosure process -- not prolong the inevitable, experts say.

Four years into the housing crisis, the real estate market is still teetering on the edge. The Obama administration has tried one program after another to stem the tide of foreclosures with limited

It's the last one.

The last movie from the last book.

The books-on-CD have been made. The author has moved on. It's our last chance to celebrate this tremendous imaginary world that so many of us love.  

Santa Cruz was out in full force. The line in front of the Cinema 9 started on Tuesday for a midnight Thursday show. Photos, starting from the back of the

Cruzioworks hosted a New Tech Meetup session, attended by many of Santa Cruz's geekiest citizens. The Meetup, headed by David Britton, always has interesting presentations and is a great way to meet other local technologists and see what's going on in town. If you haven't already, join at their website  -- it's easy and free of charge. 

The speakers:

Shane