Growth in Housing Market Tapers
Strong growth that raised the San Fernando Valley real estate market in the first half of the year appears to have plateaued, going into the traditional holiday slowdown, an industry group reported Monday.
Single-family home sales in the Valley increased by nearly 7% in November compared with the same month last year, according to the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.
But November home sales were off 2.5% from October, marking the fifth straight month that home sales either were flat or declined.
Realtors said the decline was attributable to several factors, including volatility in the stock market, President Bill Clinton’s political troubles and the continuing financial crisis in Asia.
Even with the lower sales numbers, however, industry experts said the local real estate market remained in good health.
“It’s not a slowdown,” said Realtor Fred Sands. “It’s off from where it was, but it’s still doing well.”
In the first half of the year, “you had a market that, on a scale of 1 to 10, was a 12,” Sands said. “It broke all records and was better than the peak of 1988. This is about as good as it gets.”
That appeared to be the case in the Santa Clarita Valley, which posted a 58% gain in housing sales in November compared with the same period last year, the association reported. In Santa Clarita, the median resale price for single-family homes was $217,000, up 20% from the previous year.
The single-family median resale price in the San Fernando Valley was up slightly. The $195,000 figure was up nearly 15% over November 1997 and up about $3,000 over last month.
The figure remains well short of the $245,000 median price recorded in November 1989, the high point before the slump of the early 1990s.
Real estate brokers say the key to success in the market is proper pricing. “If you have a good property that is priced well, it will sell on Christmas Eve,” said Stephanie Vitacco, a Fred Sands agent in Northridge. “If not, the property will sit until it is priced realistically, close to the current value.”
The San Fernando Valley saw pending sales for November decrease by 7% over the same period last year. Pending sales in Santa Clarita were about the same as November 1997, but down about 2.5% from October.
In the San Fernando Valley, the number of homes on the market was up 4% from a year ago and up 7.5% from the previous month.
Santa Clarita had an even tighter market, with 688 single-family homes and 286 condos for sale.
In the end, real estate market analysts said the market remains the strongest it has been this decade.
“This was a market that put a fork in the five-year real estate recession,” said Jim Link, executive vice president of the Realtors Assn. “We are going to see a good solid market [in the coming year]. It will not have the spikes we saw this year.”
