County Home Sales Up 26% in 2nd Quarter : Real estate: Housing developers attribute promising figures to ‘typical June swoon.’

In another sign of new vigor in the Orange County real estate market, second-quarter sales of new and existing homes jumped more than 26% from the same period last year.

TRW REDI Property Data reported Tuesday that 10,205 homes were sold from April through June, compared to 8,099 homes sold during the second quarter of 1993.

“The significance of these numbers is a continuation of a healthier market we’ve seen so far this year,” said Nima Nattagh, an analyst with the Riverside-based real estate data firm.

Local housing developers, however, were not especially enthusiastic about the second-quarter figures, noting that home sales are typically strongest during the summer months and predicting that higher interest rates will depress housing sales.

“These numbers show your typical June swoon,” said Tom Martin, vice president of sales and marketing for Coto de Caza, a large master-planned community in south Orange County. “Higher interest rates are making everyone skittish. I think housing sales will stay about the same for the rest of the year, and then we will have an strong first quarter of 1995.”

In June, 3,588 single-family homes and condominiums closed escrow, the highest number of sales since June, 1991, when 3,771 homes sold, according to TRW figures. “It’s going well, but we’re still well below the market activity we had in 1988 and 1989,” Nattagh said. “I don’t think we will get back to that for the near future.”

So, though sales are up, housing prices will remain soft, Nattagh predicted.

Kenneth Agid, president of the Marketing Department, a real estate firm in Irvine, agreed that rising interest rates will likely keep home sales fairly level for the rest of this year.

“This market is not coming to a boil,” Agid said. “It’s just been put on simmer. But the heat will gradually increase, and before we know it, it will be better.”