California

New residents to the Bay Area are earning far more than the people they're chasing out, a new report says, pushing up home prices and highlighting the gap between owners and renters in Silicon Valley.

Louise Juracek, a broker associate at Coldwell Banker Preferred Realtors in Bakersfield, Calif., sells 130 to 150 houses a year.

The new federal budget approved this month boosted tax credits for corporations that help finance low-cost housing but the move is unlikely to help a long-stalled 63-unit affordable housing project with a $5 million funding gap.

The median price of a Marin home rose to $885,750 in February, an 8.7% increase over the $815,000 median a year earlier.

Heads of a large real estate investment company with offices in Alaska and California have agreed to pay $3 million in fines for what a federal agency says was a scheme to "bilk" hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars.

San Diego County home prices jumped 8.6% in February compared to a year ago, while sales remained tight as the region struggles with a shortage of homes for sale.

Southern California home prices continued galloping upward at double-digit rates in February amid a lopsided mismatch between the number of buyers and sellers.

The median sales price of existing single-family homes rose across the Sacramento region in February compared with the same month last year, while newly built homes accounted for a larger share of the region's residential real estate market.

One candidate in the San Francisco mayor's race wants to shake out the pockets of real estate developers. Another wants to sue speculators who he said are putting people out on the street. A third called for a rigorous analysis of the city's housing stock.

Home equity levels increased year-to-year in the fourth quarter of 2017 following a larger-than-expected surge in home prices during the past year.