Home Resales Up 21% in O.C. in December : * Real estate: Other urban areas throughout the state also report gains, but the rosy figures are not adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.

Sales of used houses in Orange County rose an estimated 21% in December from a year ago, and some of California’s other urban areas also posted big gains last month, the California Assn. of Realtors said Monday.

The news, however, may not be as good as it first seems. The numbers don’t take into account seasonal bumps that may artificially inflate the figures.

Home sales statewide, for instance--which are adjusted for seasonal fluctuations--rose only 3% last month from December, 1990.

Statewide sales were 388,710 in December on an annualized basis--meaning that’s the number of homes that would be sold if the next 11 months equaled December’s sales pace. A year ago, the figure was 376,430.

Between November and December, meanwhile, sales dropped 0.6% statewide.

Again, while the figures aren’t directly comparable, Orange County sales rose 1.5% over the month, from 808 to 820. A year earlier, in December, 1990, 677 homes were sold in Orange County.

Chuck Lamb, president of the California Assn. of Realtors and a San Fernando Valley realtor, said that an “encouraging sign” in the year-end numbers was that “nearly every major metropolitan area (in the state) recorded modest detached-home sales gains both monthly and year to year.”

The median price of a house in Orange County was $239,320 at year’s end. That was up $10,000, or more than 4%, from last December’s $229,120, a far slower growth rate than when the local housing market was booming in 1988 and 1989. It was just one percentage point more than the rate of inflation last year, which was 3%.

The statewide median price for a house dropped slightly to $194,180 from November. But it was also up more than 4% from the December, 1990, median of $190,380.

It was the 10th consecutive year that home prices have increased in California, the trade association said.

By comparison, median home prices in the expensive San Francisco area were $257,590 in December, up nearly 5% from $245,850 in December, 1990. Home sales rose 19% over the year, although that figure wasn’t statistically adjusted either, the trade group said.

The San Diego median price was $190,320, much closer to the state median, and it rose nearly 5% from a median of $181,720 a year ago. Unadjusted sales in the San Diego region rose nearly 25%.

The Los Angeles median price was $209,190, compared to $207,140 a year ago, an increase of 1%. Sales rose only 2.3% over the year.

Resale Rebound Though well below the pace of the late 1980s, resales of Orange County homes have shown increases in eight of the last nine months. Median prices, while up from December, 1990, remain significantly below a peak of $256,990 set just before the start of the recession in mid-1990.

Median Prices Median prices of Orange County homes rose 4.4% in December from a year earlier, barely outpacing 1991’s inflation rate of 3%.

Home Sales December sales of resale homes in Orange County jumped 21% from a year earlier. Source: California Assn. of Realtors