Home Prices Here Still Highest

Residential developers are building lower-priced new homes and the recession has clamped a lid on soaring resale home prices, but Orange County continues hanging on to its position as the Southland’s highest-priced locale.

And despite the Southland’s gently falling new home prices, there is no discernible rush by consumers to snap up homes at the bottom of the market, an analyst at TRW Redi Property Services has found.

“We had expected to see a drop in the market share held by homes in the $250,000 to $400,000 price range in favor of those priced under $175,000, but we are just not seeing it,” said research analyst Nima Nattagh.

“I think it is because the negative factors--uncertainty about the economy and one’s own job security--are outweighing the positives, like lower interest rates and static home prices.”

In Orange County, for example, the average price of a new home dipped 4.2% to $255,090 in the first quarter of 1992, from $266,291 a year earlier.

But the contingent of buyers shifting into the under-$250,000 market was slight and the move to homes priced at less than $175,000--mostly condos and townhouses--was barely noticeable.

Homes in Orange County priced from $250,000 to $400,000 accounted for 26% of all sales from January to March, Nattagh said, compared to 27.5% of all sales in the same period of 1991.

But sales of homes priced below $175,000 barely moved, nudging up to represent a 28.7% share, contrasted with 28.6% last year. Sales of homes in the $400,000 to $600,000 range actually increased in market share, accounting for 6.2% of the Orange County market in the first quarter, up from 6% a year earlier.

The average residential sales price for all homes--new and resale--in the county during the first three months was $252,500, down from $253,798 a year earlier but still the highest in the five-county area that stretches from Los Angeles to the Mexican border.

But the gap between Orange County and its neighbors--particularly Los Angeles County--is narrowing.

The average selling price in Orange County dropped 0.5% in the three-month period, for the biggest decline in the region, while Los Angeles County, with a $245,455 average, posted the area’s only gain with a scant 0.1% increase from a year earlier.