Ild, I'd like to check on this explanation for the drop in sales in Orange County. Reporters covering these stories are feed a lot of crap from carnival barkers and shills, so good scholarship requires Bubbler watchers "not to trust, but verify". Lack of listings? That wouldn't be consistent with what we seeing elsewhere in places like downtown San Diego and Las Vegas. Do you have the MLS data, listings with changes, and price reductions?
ocregister.com
Limited supply a drag on sales
By HANG NGUYEN
The Orange County Register
A limited supply of residences to buy and record-high prices helped slow Orange County's home-sales pace in April.
Local builders and real-estate agents sold 4,547 previously owned residences and condos plus new homes last month. That's down 0.7 percent from a year ago, according to numbers released Monday by the market tracker DataQuick.
April marked the 14th month out of the last 16 that housing sales activity was lower than the comparative year-ago period.
"Our biggest challenge is getting properties for sale," said James Joseph, owner of real-estate agency Century 21 Grisham-Joseph.
So his O.C. agents, who work mostly in north county, are knocking on doors, calling folks and sending mail to prospects to scrounge up home listings.
Affordability is also a factor cooling the sales pace, said Cindy Morgan, real-estate agent for First Team Real Estate.
According to the California Association of Realtors, just 11 percent of Orange County households were able to afford a median-priced home in March. That's the lowest in 17 years.
Orange County's $576,000 median sales price for April keeps it as the most expensive county in Southern California, DataQuick says. The next costliest is Ventura County, which is $47,000 cheaper at a median price of $529,000.
"I don't know how my kids will afford a home someday," said Morgan, mother of three, ages 14, 16 and 18.
The bulk of Morgan's clients today are move-up buyers. That's a stark contrast to the late 1990s when most of her customers were buying their first home.
First-time homebuyers are crucial to the marketplace. Their purchases typically allow the move-up buyers to buy their next residence. So Morgan worries that this dwindling pool of buyers may further slow appreciation – or even pull down prices.
"It all starts at the bottom and feeds up," Morgan said of the importance of first-time buyers. |
