July Home Sales Are Off 4.6%; Annual Slowdown Is Cited

Although the pace is brisker than a year ago, Orange County housing sales entered the doldrums in July with a 4.6% drop from June, according to a monthly survey of real estate sales.

The drop, accompanied by decreases in the average price of new and resale homes as sellers lowered prices in hopes of generating interest in their properties, came as no surprise. July typically is a slower month for sales than June, and with builders holding back new construction because of the recession, there isn’t much out there to excite buyers these days.

And while there was a spurt of spending in the spring, many economists believe that the recession still has several months to run.

Stagnant as the housing market in Orange County has been this year, however, it still has been outperforming the rest of the Southland.

Total July sales in the five counties included in the TRW Marketing Services monthly report--Orange, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside--were down 0.4% from July, 1990 and dropped 7% from June, 1991.

In all, 4,372 new and resale homes changed hands in Orange County during July, down from 4,581 in June but 8.6% more than the 4,024 home sales recorded in July of last year, TRW reported. The average price of resale homes for the month was $242,766, down 0.7% from $244,461 in July, 1990 and virtually unchanged from the $242,335 reported in June, 1991. The average new home price of $264,048 was up 2.1% from $258,640 a year earlier but down 6.2% from $281,515 in June.

For the first seven months of the year, according to TRW’s data, 27,677 home sales have been recorded in Orange County, up a scant 1.9% from 27,165 sales in the same period last year.