California home prices move up
California’s battered housing market improved in June as an increase in pricier homes selling in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area helped push up a key measure of home price strength.
The state’s median home price rose 1.5% from the prior month and increased 8.3% from June 2011, according to San Diego real estate firm DataQuick. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less.
It was the fourth consecutive month that the median rose year over year.
DataQuick President John Walsh, in a news release announcing Bay Area statistics Wednesday, characterized the market as similar to 2009, “only in reverse.”
“Instead of foreclosure resales soaring they’re waning, and instead of high-end sales slumping they’re posting some of the larger sales gains,” Walsh said. “This is one of the main reasons that various price measures are pointing higher — a so-called change in market mix.”
Statewide, home sales were down 1.8% from May but up 5.3% from June 2011. A total of 41,027 new and previously owned homes and condominiums were sold last month, DataQuick reported. Sales in the state still remain 17.5% lower than the average for June dating to 1988, when DataQuick statistics began.
In Southern California, the median home price rose to $300,000, up 1.7% from May and 5.3% higher than in June 2011. Sales in the Southland — 22,075 — fell 0.5% compared with May but were 7.5% higher than a year earlier.
In the Bay Area, the median home price was $417,000 last month, up 4.3% from May and a 10.4% increase from June 2011. Sales of homes in the nine-county Bay Area, at 8,577, were down 2.6% from the prior month but up 7.2% from a year earlier.
