If you think about it, more bad news about housing isn’t… well… actually new. And while it appears there could me some more bad news in the way of foreclosures on the horizon for California, the good news is the state’s top authority on housing believes the numbers of anticipated foreclosures are being blown out of perspective.

And the better news is: it appears there is growing interest in well-priced properties from buyers seeking good deals, home sales are expected continue to rise at a rapid pace and many experts are now saying that now may be the time to buy.

Can anyone say “bottom?"

One of the first signs the housing market may be looking up—and if the market is truly at the bottom, the only way to look is up—is in the form of multiple offers on homes listed for sale. “It’s very competitive for the very well-priced homes, particularly foreclosures, distressed properties,” Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist of the California Association of Realtors, told me in a phone interview.

Additionally, Appleton-Young noted that Realtors representing home sellers are reporting that “there is often multiple bidding on properties.” And not only did single-family home sales rise nearly 25% last year, “we’re going to be up another 25% this year,” she adds.

Keller Williams Realty agent Richard Daskam, who represents a large number of buyers and sellers in Long Beach and surrounding areas, says “regular homes are getting a lot of offers. Equity sales or REOs (real estate owned properties), they’re getting multiple offers.” And he says that in some parts of Long Beach selling prices have risen 10% or greater from a year ago.

One driver behind home sales and increasing interest in the market is what some would classify as “rock bottom” home prices—particularly prices on foreclosures and properties whose owners are in some stage of foreclosure—which are sparking the interest of people who have for the last two years steered clear of the market.

“Many of the foreclosures are still priced under market,” Daskam says. That’s partly because market values were set three or four months ago. The lag is due to the failure by banks to recognize the current market value, because they are relying on initial valuations conducted before the federal and state moratoriums on foreclosures, he adds.

(For more on the foreclosure moratorium and how it will impact home sales and pricing, as well as details on home prices and sales in Long Beach and surrounding areas, see my updated column on Friday).

The backlog of foreclosures, which some say is due to the moratorium, among other factors, points to more foreclosures on the way. “We know that there’s a wave of foreclosures coming,” says Daskam, who does home valuations for banks as a side business.

In what’s known as broker price opinions (BPOs), agents are often hired by banks, at smaller fees earned by appraisers, to obtain three listing and three sales comparisons, giving banks a quick value, or snapshot, of the current value of a property so a property can be quickly priced and put up for sale.

Daskam says he’s received e-mails from three banks “saying that they all had over 5,000 orders for these snapshots.” All of those orders for property snapshots from are for properties “in some mode of foreclosure,” adds Daskam.

Appleton-Young says she wouldn’t classify the number of expected foreclosures to hit the market a “wave of foreclosures.”

For one thing, she adds, “there is some political pressure on lenders to be gentle with the foreclosure proceedings to see what else they can do. Am I expecting foreclosures to pick up in the future? Absolutely. But I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as big as it’s being reported.”

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