RESALE HOME PRICES UP VALLEYWIDE SURVEY SHOWS 17% UPTURN IN EARLY 2000.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Resale home prices jumped 17 percent between the first six months of 1999 and the first six months of this year, a local study shows.

The number of homes sold - excluding new homes - dipped 7 percent, but the biggest decline was in sales of homes whose owners had lost them to foreclosure.

``The Antelope Valley used to be described as the foreclosure capital of the nation,'' said Harvey Holloway, a Lancaster Realtor who analyzes home sales for the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance. ``We've experienced a dramatic decline in foreclosure sales.''

Holloway's analysis of Los Angeles and Kern county tax assessor records indicated that 3,306 existing houses were sold from January through June, down from 3,573 houses sold in the first six months of 1999. The average sales price climbed from $92,000 to nearly $108,000, he said.

Another 181 new homes were sold at an average price of nearly $161,000.

Of the resale homes, 410 were sold by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Veterans Administration because their owners had lost them to foreclosure.

The foreclosure sales were down 59 percent from 1,012 in the first six months of 1999.

The change meant that foreclosure sales went from 28 percent of total sales to 12 percent of local sales, Holloway said.

Local real estate agents said the decline illustrates the dwindling supply of foreclosed homes, a sign that the valley's economy and home market has turned around. Foreclosed homes sold now were actually lost by their owners more than a year earlier, agents say.

Holloway's analysis showed that prices went up in every area of the valley. He included in his statistics the northeastern Kern County community of Ridgecrest, where prices went down 7 percent.

The biggest price hike was 78 percent in Antelope Acres and the far western valley, where 20 homes sold for an average price of $204,000.

Sales prices went up 18 percent in Lake Los Angeles and in east Palmdale - to an average $65,930 in Lake Los Angeles and $96,146 in east Palmdale.

Prices went up 16 percent in Leona Valley, Lake Elizabeth and Lake Hughes to $168,000.

Prices went up 14 percent in east Lancaster, to $90,755, and in the Littlerock-Pearblossom area, to $97,603.

In west Palmdale, prices went up 8 percent to nearly $159,000, and in Quartz Hill and west Lancaster they went up 9 percent to nearly $107,000.

Rosamond prices went up 2 percent to $83,538.

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Photo:

(color) A new study shows that, although fewer units are being sold, prices for homes in the Antelope Valley have increased.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer