Monthly San Diego home price falls The median price for a home in San Diego County fell from September to October, but the pace of annual appreciation still ticked up. Last month, the county median price was $440,000, down from $445,000 in September, real-estate tracker CoreLogic DataQuick reported Wednesday. Despite the drop, the pace of annual appreciation increased from 5.5 percent in September to 6.6 percent in October because home prices fell by nearly $10,000 between those two months in 2013. “We’re heading into the holidays and so this is a time of year when things tend to slow down a bit anyway,” said Mark Goldman, a loan officer and real-estate lecturer at San Diego State University. “The market’s still a bit more stable than it was.” The pace of annual home price appreciation has been slowing since peaking at 24.1 percent in June 2013, led largely by investor activity such as foreclosure resales. It has been in the single digits since April, with activity in the market down each month compared to the same in the prior year. Last month’s 3,308 transactions were down 5.7 percent from October 2013. Andrew LePage, a CoreLogic DataQuick analyst, said in a statement that consumer homebuyers haven’t flooded the market since investors exhausted the supply of foreclosure properties. That’s made for a markedly slow 2014. “We’ve yet to see traditional buyers fill the void left by the drop-off in investor and cash buyers, which began in spring last year,” LePage said. “New-home transactions are still running at about half their normal level. The resale market is hampered by constrained inventory in many areas, in part because some people who want to put their homes up for sale still haven’t regained enough equity to purchase their next home.” LePage added that those who are considering buying are struggling with affordability and qualifying for mortgages. While getting a loan is difficult, buyers got a bit of help in October when the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 4.04 percent, lowest since May 2013. Goldman said that led to increased activity during the month, which beat September’s total by three transactions. “People are real sensitive to market conditions and can be motivated to come into the market,” he said. “In other words people who maybe want to sell or maybe want to buy, they’re just waiting for some sort of signal, which could be interest rates.” Goldman said the market is now being paced by normal factors, such as wages and employment, as opposed to fixing and flipping. Supply, however, is still constrained. In October, there were 8,295 active listings in the county, up from 6,990 a year earlier, the San Diego Association of Realtors reports. Still, that represents fewer than three months of inventory, when a healthy market would have double that. Around Southern California, Orange County’s median rose 10.2 percent over the year to $540,000, while the median price in Los Angeles County was up 7.1 percent to $455,000. Unlike San Diego County, transactions declined over the year in those two regions. U-T San Diego
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 19:17:04 +0000
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