DataQuick has released it's market summary for May - remember, you can never truly call "bottom" until you've started moving back up. Let's hope this is the launch point for Southern California's next positive cycle - DR
Southern California home sales rose for the 11th consecutive month in May as sales of $500,000-plus homes started to come back. The median price paid increased slightly from the prior month for the first time since July 2007, the result of a shift in market activity where sales of deeply discounted foreclosures waned and mid to high-end purchases rose.
A total of 20,775 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Rivers
ide and San Bernardino counties last month. That was up 1.3 percent from 20,514 in April and up 22.8 percent from 16,917 a year ago, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick. Sales have increased year-over-year for eleven consecutive months.
May’s sales were the highest for that month since May 2006, when 30,303 homes sold, but were 21.2 percent below the average May sales total since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics begin.
Foreclosure resales – homes sold in May that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – accounted for 50.2 percent of all Southland resales. That was down from 53.5 percent in April and from a peak of 56.7 percent in February. May’s figure was the lowest since foreclosure resales were 50.9 percent of all resales last October.
Last month 83 percent of the existing Southland houses sold were purchased for less than $500,000, compared with 84.8 percent in April. Conversely, sales $500,000 and above rose from 15.2 percent of sales in April to 17 percent in May. The last time the $500,000-plus market made up more than 17 percent of all sales was last October, when they were 19.9 percent of sales.
The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the six-county Southland last month was $249,000, up 0.8 percent from $247,000 in April but down 32.7 percent from $370,000 a year ago.
The median price hadn’t risen from one month to the next since July 2007, when it increased 0.6 percent from $502,000 to $505,000.
Last month’s median was the second-lowest for any month since it was $242,000 in February 2002, and it stood 50.7 percent below the peak $505,000 median reached in spring and summer of 2007.
