Home Sales in California Are Down Sharply

California’s drop-off in home sales during the third quarter of the year was one of the sharpest in the nation, 18.9%, but the state’s price situation in the three-month period was erratic, the National Assn. of Realtors reported Monday.

The median resale price dropped in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Orange County, but it rose 24% in the Sacramento area.

Nationally, sales of existing homes from July through September slipped 2.5% from their level a year earlier and will remain slow in the first half of 1991 because of the weakening economy, a real estate trade group said Monday.

The realtors group said sales of previously owned homes totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.66 million units in the three-month period. Sales declined in the year’s two previous quarters as well.

The sales slump was worse than California’s in other only three other states--Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

California’s sales drop of 18.9% for the three-month period covered 409,300 homes sold. The median home resale price in the July-to-September period also fell in most of California compared to the same three months in 1989.

The biggest drop was a 4.7% decline in the median price in the Los Angeles area to $211,407. The San Francisco area had a 3.1% price decline to a median of $261,000. Orange County had a 1.8% price drop to a median of $241,700.

The price increase in the Sacramento area was a 24.4% jump to a median of $144,600. And there was a 3% rise in the Riverside-San Bernardino area to a median price of $132,400. The median resale price in the San Diego area for the three months held nearly steady at $186,600, up .1%.

Elsewhere in the West, median home prices were up sharply in Seattle, Portland and Phoenix, and the number of home resales rose sharply in Idaho, Utah and Arizona.

Nationwide, the realtors association recorded sales of 3.78 million units last year, down from 3.95 million in 1988.

Although there were areas of strength in the housing industry during the third quarter, sales declined in 28 states and were unchanged in Oregon. Nineteen states posted increases. Statistics were unavailable for Alaska and Maine.

Overall, however, “the market will remain slow for the rest of 1990 and into the first half of 1991 as the country experiences a mild recession,” said Norman A. Flynn, president of the National Assn. of Realtors.

John A. Tuccillo, the association’s chief economist, said the availability of moderately priced houses boosted sales in the South and kept them from falling faster in the Midwest.

Sales in the Western states fell 8.8% to an annual rate of 580,000, and in the Northeast were down 8.5% to a rate of 650,000.

Tuccillo said the decline in the West largely resulted from a sharp drop in coastal California markets. The median price dropped 5.3% to $138,200, reflecting more purchases in less costly inland markets.

Sales in the Northeast have been sluggish for nearly two years, and “although Pennsylvania resale activity appears to be recovering, the rest of the region, particularly along the Boston-New York corridor, remains down in the dumps,” Flynn said.

The median price of a home in the Northeast dropped 2.7% to $143,100.

“Home sales along the New York-Boston corridor have been gridlocked by sellers who’ve been reluctant to lower their prices to fit a buyers’ market, and by buyers who’ve been waiting for lower prices,” Tuccillo said.

The realtors association also reported that the median price of an existing home was $96,600, 1.8% above that for the third quarter of 1989. It ranged from $375,000 in Honolulu to $49,200 in Saginaw, Mich., among the 96 metropolitan areas surveyed.

The median price means half of the homes cost more, half less. The survey included detached homes, townhouses, apartment condominiums and cooperatives.

The only region experiencing increased sales was the South, where sales rose 1.4% to an annual rate of 1.42 million. Several oil-patch areas that had suffered adverse market conditions in recent years recorded increases.

Texas had a third-quarter increase of 8.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 246,300 units. Oklahoma, another oil-producing state, posted a 7.3% gain to 55,100 units. Sales were up 5.9% in Louisiana to 37,100 units.

The median price of a home in the South was $97,200, up 1.8% from a year earlier.

HOME PRICES

Homes sales slumped in California in the third quarter from a year ago and housing prices slumped in the coastal counties, including Orange County.

Area Median Price % Change from 1989 Los Angeles 211,400 -4.7 Orange County 241,700 -1.8 Riverside-San Bernardino 132,400 3.0 Sacramento 144,600 24.4 San Diego 186,600 0.1 San Francisco 261,600 -3.1

Source: National Assn. of Realtors