The sales data for the county’s home market, accompanying the October price data I posted yesterday, shows some slight increases month-to-month but still reveals a 21 percent overall drop compared to last October. The data comes from La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.
A 75-unit increase from September in overall home sales last month brought the sales total to 3,282 units in the county.
A very slight, 0.1 percent increase occurred from September to October for resale detached homes (1.696 units). That portion of the market provided more than half of the county’s sales, and logged a 21 percent year-over-year drop.
Resale condos and townhouses were down eight units from September to 640. That’s down 30.9 percent from last October’s 926 units.
Sixty-one more new units (new homes or condo conversions) sold in October than in September, at 946 last month. That’s down 11.6 percent from a year ago.
The Southern California region experienced the slowest October in sales in ten years last month, selling about 10,000 fewer homes than the peak October for sales in 2003.
That ol’ buyer and seller psychology is very much in play here, DataQuick executives say. From a press release, here’s the DQ president:
“It’s harder to buy a home if you think it might go down in value than it is if you’re convinced it’s going up. Buyers are taking their time, trying to wait out the uncertainty in a market that is rebalancing itself. Additionally, many potential buyers are in the move-up category, and they have their own home they need to sell,” said Marshall Prentice, DataQuick president.
Last month, 22,117 homes were sold in the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange. The median price paid among all of those regions was $484,000, which is a slight increase (2.3 percent) from last October.
DataQuick is expecting the negative year-over-year price comparisons for the Southland region soon. Here’s a snippet from their press release:
Year-over-year increases have been in the single digits for seven months and are expected to be slightly negative by the end of the year or early next year.