Area Home Sales at 7-Year High

Southern California’s sizzling housing market steamed right through the normally quiet month of October, as more homes sold in Los Angeles and Orange counties than in any month since 1990. Prices rose solidly in all housing categories as well.

Experts said pent-up demand has been unleashed by three powerful forces: rock-bottom interest rates, baby boomers trading up to larger homes, and the widespread belief that, after years of disappointment, home prices are really rising again.

In Orange County, 46.5% more homes sold last month than in October 1996, according to figures released Thursday by Acxiom/DataQuick Information Services, a real estate information firm. The median sales price was $208,000--8.9% higher than a year earlier, and the highest since August 1994.

In Los Angeles County, where the market has recovered more slowly in many areas, overall home sales were up 19.9% from a year earlier, while the median price rose 6.8% to $172,000. That was slightly higher than the $171,000 median price for the five-county Southern California region.

Last month’s heavy sales were all the more impressive because they occurred outside the spring and early summer months, when buyers tend to warm up to home purchases and turn out in droves.

Indeed, October typically is the fourth- slowest month in the year for home sales.

“It’s hope--that’s what’s driving the market,” said Jeff Stokes, a Coldwell Banker agent in Pasadena who noted that cash-flush buyers from the booming entertainment industry are buoying sales the way aerospace engineers once did.

He said buyers are purchasing “fixer-upper” houses and condominiums for quick repair and resale--a speculative form of investment that last paid off before recession gripped the economy and swatted down home prices in the early 1990s.

“Interest rates are low, the economy looks good. The stock market could tank, and that could hurt, but people have to have a place to live,” Stokes said.

Even if the winter is a wet one, driving home buyers inside, it’s only likely to put the home-buying spree on hold for a few months, he said.

Bad weather “might slow things down a little bit. It has been slow here for the last week, that’s for sure. But they’ll just buy later.”

For much of the 1990s, only lower-priced housing in Southern California showed much resilience. More recently, sales and prices of luxury homes began going up.

But real estate experts say all types of housing, including mid-level trade-up homes that had been a sluggish segment of the market, are now showing healthy sales.

“There’s activity in virtually all categories and all areas,” said John Karevoll, a DataQuick statistician.

Analysts say that although home values have rebounded in most neighborhoods, they’re typically selling for far less than their peak prices in 1989 and 1990.

And as yet, they see no duplication of the feeding frenzy for Southern California homes that astonished the nation in 1987 and 1988.

In August 1988, 14,118 homes were sold in Los Angeles County, and 6,160 in Orange County, Karevoll said.

Last month, Los Angeles County’s sales totaled 9,146 and Orange County’s 4,173--only about two-thirds of that record volume.

But the number of available homes is shrinking, putting pressure on buyers to snap up houses that meet their requirements. The California Assn. of Realtors estimates that there were enough homes for sale in Los Angeles County in September to last for 5.7 months, compared with an 8.9-month backlog a year earlier.

In some areas, such as south Orange County, low inventory has created a powerful sellers’ market, as Lorna and Michael Savage can attest.

The Savages bought a two-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot Laguna Beach house in 1990, the year prices peaked.

But in October 1994, when their second child was born and they needed more room, they listed the house for sale for less than they had paid--then endured 18 months in which they received only one serious offer, which they rejected as far too low.

They had planned to add more bedrooms to their ocean-view house this year--until the telephone started ringing, with brokers calling and urging them to try again for a sale, and their agent saying local inventory had plummeted.

So they put their home up for sale on a Monday last month, had an open house the next Sunday--and received a full-price offer the following day. They then quickly entered escrow on a home twice the size in Laguna Niguel, with a pool, spa and an elementary school they especially admire.

Lorna Savage said that “give or take a few thousand,” they recouped their entire purchase price of seven years ago, plus the more than $15,000 in repairs and upgrades they had invested.

“We were amazed,” she said. “Because when we originally listed it [in 1994], we were sure we were going to lose.”

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Going Up

Home sales last month in Los Angeles County were the highest for any month since 1990.

October: 9,146

Source: Acxiom/DataQuick