TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2010 AT 1:42 P.M.
While sales in the Southern California experienced the second-slowest August in almost two decades, San Diego County saw the smallest drop of the six counties surveyed, said a report released Tuesday by MDA DataQuick, which tracks local real estate markets.
In the counties of San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange, 18,541 homes and condos — both new and resale — sold in August. It is a drop of 2.1 percent from July and a 13.8 percent drop from last August when there were 21,502 sales.
San Diego saw its sales fall 5.8 percent from August of last year, performing better than other counties in the Southland. Orange County, for instance, had the second-smallest sales decline at 9 percent, while San Bernardino had the largest decrease with August sales plummeting more than 23.3 percent.
Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University , said San Diego County didn’t see as steep a drop in sales as its counterparts because the economy here is doing slightly better with a lower unemployment rate and fewer job losses.
“That explains why San Diego did a little better,” he said.
Still, Andrew LePage, an analyst with DataQuick, cautioned about reading too much into San Diego’s August sales, saying it was just one month. In July, for instance, the county mirrored the large drop seen throughout the region.
In terms of home values, Southern California’s median price rose 4.7 percent to $288,000 in August from the previous year, but it was the lowest increase since year-over-year price gains began last December.
San Bernardino had the largest year-over-year increase in its median price, with a 9 percent jump to $158,000. Riverside was next as its median prices rose 5.3 percent to $200,000 from August 2009. San Diego came in third with a 3.7 percent increase and a median home price of $337,000. LePage said San Bernardino and Riverside counties home prices seem to be firming up after tumbling more severely than others and having appeared to reach bottom.
Adibi said he expects home price gains throughout the region to slow in the coming months but that current sales levels should hold steady on a month-over-month basis. He said the precipitous drop in sales in July, and to some extent in August, were fueled by concerns over a double-dip recession. Those worries are abating a bit.
Of course, the real key to a housing market recovery is the overall economy rebounding.
“It all depends on job creation and lowering unemployment,” Adibi said.
