Southland January Home Sales Stay Strong

The housing market stayed in high gear throughout Southern California in January and shifted into overdrive in Orange County, where prices rose at a double-digit pace not seen since the late 1980s, a real estate tracking service said Wednesday.

The median home price in Los Angeles County was up 6.1% from January 1997 to $173,000 last month, with sales up nearly 16%. The median is the point at which half the sales were for less, half for more.

Orange County had its third straight month of double-digit price increases, with a median home price of $212,000, a gain of 14.6% from a year earlier, according to Acxiom/DataQuick Information Services, which monitors all housing sales.

“To get equivalent price jumps in Orange County, you now have to go back to July 1989, when there was this frenzy with a capital F,” said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll.

Observers said low interest rates and a strengthening economy have driven housing prices and sales up in nearly all markets nationally.

“Rates haven’t been this low since the winter of 1995,” said economist John Tuccillo, a consultant to the National Assn. of Realtors. “But then we didn’t have the same factors--stronger consumer confidence, lower unemployment--that we do now.”

In Southern California, the market has been particularly strong for expensive and medium-priced homes--the “trade-up” segment of the market that dominates much of Orange County.

In the South Bay, low inventories and high demand have driven up prices of homes in the $275,000-$300,000 range, and top-end homes above $500,000 have jumped in price even more sharply, said Jim Hamilton, who heads the Remax Execs office in Redondo Beach.

A slight midwinter chill set in for prices, which fell about 1% in Los Angeles and Orange counties from the December medians. But a December-to-January decline in prices and sales is typical, reflecting the fact that fewer homes go into escrow during the holiday season, Remax’s Hamilton said.

Home prices in Los Angeles County peaked in May 1991 at $203,000. In Orange County they topped out at $223,000 in June 1991. In Orange County, they now have returned to their level in summer 1992. Los Angeles is at mid-1994 levels.

Unlike more expensive homes, lower-end housing has yet to show an increase in prices, although more entry-level homes are selling than a few years ago, Hamilton said.