L.A. County Home Prices Soar
Will it ever end?
Los Angeles County’s housing market continued its torrid pace of growth in June, as the median price for homes sold that month rose more than 16% from a year earlier to $313,000, according to figures released Wednesday. It was the county’s 28th consecutive month of double-digit price increases.
“It’s more of the same,” said John Karevoll, an analyst at DataQuick Information Systems, which compiles the real estate sales data. “The picture out there is impressive and boring all at once.”
The number of new and existing houses and condominiums sold in the county remained flat from 2002, dipping 0.8% to 10,662 in June -- but not due to weakening demand, housing experts and brokers said. Instead, a shortage of homes and a glut of refinancings have continued to slow sales and delay escrow closings in what is typically the busiest season for real estate.
“When you finally find the perfect home for your client, which takes a while these days, you have to go get in line for your turn at escrow,” said Walter Logan, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker in San Gabriel. “It’s a slow-moving machine that can really drag things out.”
The number of new homes sold in Los Angeles County, however, went up more than 18% to 728 last month from a year earlier, reflecting a ramp-up in production of houses and condos in recent months.
DataQuick said that in June, condominiums in the county posted the largest year-over-year price increase -- 20.5% to $250,000. Existing single-family homes climbed 16.8% to $326,000, and new-home prices rose 4.2% to $368,500.
One possible reason for the relatively small rise in new-home prices is that more houses are going up in the relatively affordable Antelope Valley, said Michelle Wolkoys, managing director at Meyers Group, a new-home research firm in Irvine. Also, she said, with little developable land in the county, builders are constructing more attached houses and condos, which are generally cheaper than detached properties.
Some real estate agents said that current listings are beginning to take longer to sell than just a few months ago, a development they largely attribute to sellers who want to inflate the price of their homes even more than this record-breaking market will tolerate.
In Long Beach last weekend, Coastal Sunset agent Lorraine Yi held an open house near Bixby Park and debated whether she should advise the owners to reduce the asking price -- again.
“They’ve already come down from $525,000 to $499,900 in two weeks,” she said, strumming her fingers on a stack of comparable listings in the area. “But there’s still no action. I think it would sell in a week if we dropped it another $5,000 or $7,000.”
The 10-year average inventory in Los Angeles County is 7 1/2 months -- meaning that at the historically normal rate of buying, it would take that much time for the supply to be exhausted, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. In May, the inventory dropped to less than two months, from three at the beginning of the year.
The supply shortage isn’t just in L.A. County. Mark Griffith, who manages the Coldwell Banker office in Orange County’s Mission Viejo, said there were 599 homes listed for sale in March. That dropped to 425 at the beginning of this week.
“That is a huge, huge decrease in available homes,” he said. “And this is when people usually like to plan a move.”
Griffith said properties that are on the market don’t last long if they are priced right. “If something’s sitting, something’s wrong,” he said.
