Lake Tahoe home sales on the rise as buyers pick up bargains

Vacation property sales have picked up around Lake Tahoe as plunging home prices bring buyers back, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.
Home sales have picked up significantly this year as investors, vacation home buyers and even first-time buyers respond to declining prices and historically low interest rates. The trend is evident on both sides of the California and Nevada state line.
First-quarter single-family home sales near Lake Tahoe have increased about 15 percent over the first three months of 2011, the Business Journal reports.

Meanwhile, local realtors see distressed homes leveling off. Deb Howard, broker-owner of Deb Howard & Co. tells Investor's Business Daily that distressed homes around the lake are "almost all gone" and that prices are inching upward.
Home prices in vacation destinations often rise and fall alongside their nearby major markets. If the economy is improving in San Francisco, for example, that bodes well for Lake Tahoe, according to CNN and Money Magazine.
"Buyers who were on the fence are going for it," Lake Tahoe area agent Brandon Yee, tells the magazine.
In other promising news, real estate research firm DataQuick reported Thursday that the sales of new and existing houses and condos climbed 18 percent from last year to nearly 42,000, the highest May tally in six years. The state's median sales price jumped more than 8 percent from May 2011 to $270,000, the highest in nearly two years.