Orange County & San Diego Market Update
May 30, 2012 by admin · Leave a Comment
Southern California’s median sale price rose year-over-year in April for the first time in 16 months, reflecting stronger, affordability-driven demand and a slimmer inventory of homes for sale – especially low-cost foreclosures. Last month’s sales were modestly higher than a year ago, thanks to significant gains in the coastal counties, but remained well below average, a real estate information service reported.
“The housing market continued its painfully slow crawl back toward normalcy last month. You can see it in the fading role of foreclosures, the uptick in median prices here and there, and the higher levels of sales in coastal counties,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.
“Of course, there are still a lot of things that make this market abnormal,” he said. “Investor and cash buying are still unusually robust. The jumbo loan market has yet to recover, and the use of plain-vanilla adjustable-rate mortgages, or ‘ARMs,’ remains far below normal. Lots of homeowners are ‘underwater,’ and the market remains awash in uncertainty over the economy, home prices, and the way lenders will handle the many thousands of homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments.”
