REAL ESTATE

Fourth-Quarter Improvement: Fourth-quarter new-home sales in Orange County were the best in four years as builders moved 1,770 homes and condos, according to the Meyers Group. The Newport Beach-based real estate consulting company counted 6,874 new-home sales in all of 1993--up from 5,972 in 1992.

To get the phone book-size report into clients’ hands fast, Meyers Group stops collecting data on Dec. 15, so the last two weeks of the year aren’t included.

Setting that shortcoming aside, the report pegs the median price of an attached unit during the period at $154,900--up just under 1% from $153,912 in the third quarter. The median price of a conventional single-family home was $269,990, down 1.1% from the third quarter’s $272,960.

Price changes are accounted for by differences in lot and house size as builders switch the sort of housing offered as well as by the deals various developers got when they bought the land for their projects.