Area Home Sales Fall; Prices Inch Upward

San Fernando Valley home sales tumbled 13.9% in November, while median home prices edged up fractionally, a sign that the autumn-winter housing slowdown could linger, real estate specialists said Monday.

Resale listings for single-family homes fell 10.4% between October and November, and the number of homes that closed escrow dropped by 13.9% over the same period, according to the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.

Falling inventories over the past year have been a boon to area home sellers who were able to command ever-higher prices amid greater housing demand and a flood of buyers spurred on by low interest rates.

The median price of a single-family resale home barely budged in recent months, however, indicating to some that buyers are becoming increasingly wary of the market’s recent record-breaking pace, market watchers said.

“The past couple of years we’ve seen homes appreciate to historical peaks,” said Jim Link, executive vice president of the Realtors’ association.

“While demand is still there, that rate is slowing, and we are going to see a market that swings in favor of the buyer.”

While the Valley median price--the price at which half of the homes sold for more and half for less--increased by only $1,000 to $263,000 from October to November, it jumped 9.6% over the same month last year.

Healthy growth from last year to this is testament to the resilience of the area’s housing market, especially in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and national economic recession that officially began in March, Link and others said.

But, they said, they expected the fallout from those events to cut into the local housing market eventually.

Leslie Appleton-Young, vice president and chief economist for the California Assn. of Realtors, said the health of the Southern California housing market depends to a large extent on the amount and duration of job losses during the economic downturn.

“We probably won’t get out unscathed,” she said, noting that there already has been price erosion in high-end homes. “But it won’t be anywhere near the losses we had in the early 1990s.”

ReMax agent Matt Epstein, who concentrates on home sales in Sherman Oaks and Studio City, said he actually has seen an increase in business in the waning months of the year.

“The million-and-over market is phenomenal, and even the $500,000-and-under inventory is going out at multiple offers,” Epstein said. “We are getting a lot of the Westside buyers who can’t find what they want there and are coming here.”

Condominiums, the traditional refuge for first-time and moderate-income buyers, saw median prices fall 4.4%, to $153,000 from October to November, although sales increased by 8% this November over last year, according to the report.

In the Santa Clarita Valley, home sales rebounded in November after dropping 10.5% in October.

November sales finished 22.7% ahead of November 2000, but the number of new listings over the same period fell 29%, the report said.

The median single-family home price in the Santa Clarita Valley was $287,000 in November, up 5.5% from October. The median condominium price was $154,900, down only fractionally from October. Condominium sales over the same period dropped 14%, with 111 changing hands, compared with 129 the month before.