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55% of SoCal home sales were foreclosures

December 16th, 2008, 11:49 am · 6 Comments · posted by Jeff Collins

SoCal Nov. by DataQuick
Area Price Vs. ‘07 Sales Vs. ‘07
Los Angeles $340,000 -31.9% 5,037 12.7%
Orange $400,000 -31.4% 2,177 38.9%
Riverside $220,000 -38.3% 3,719 48.6%
San Berdoo $185,250 -43.9% 2,385 38.7%
San Diego $305,000 -30.7% 2,673 11.4%
Ventura $355,000 -31.9% 729 41.3%
SoCal $285,000 -34.5% 16,720 26.9%

Foreclosed homes made up 55% of resale transactions in Southern California – 44% in Orange County and nearly seven out of every 10 sales in the Inland Empire – driving down prices to levels not seen since the spring of 2003, market-tracker MDA DataQuick reported today.

Last month’s price was roughly a buy-three-get-two-free sale for Southern California homes: The median price of a Southern California was $285,000, down 44% — or almost half off — from the value for similar homes at the market peak 18 months ago. That is, a single median-priced home cost $505,000 in June 2007. Last month, you could buy two median priced homes for $570,000, or just $65,000 more.

“Bargains and bargain hunters have kept this market alive,” the DataQuick press release quoted company President John Walsh as saying.

November sales outpaced last year for a fifth straight month, up nearly 27% regionwide. That’s a decent showing considering that there were fewer business days last month than in a typical November. The average number of transactions per day, for example, was just 1% lower than the daily average in October, which had the highest number of sales for any month this year so far.

The median price for areas with the highest sale numbers was under $260,000, with about half of those sales using government-insured FHA financing, DataQuick reported. November sales tended to drop in coastal zones, where the median price was over $500,000 and financing was harder to get.

Other highlights of November’s DataQuick housing reports …

Don’t forget …

And tell us …

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 6 Comments

  • Mick says:
    December 16, 2008 at 11 am

    Mama mia, dat’sa biga price drop!

  • Bill says:
    December 16, 2008 at 3 pm

    “55% of SoCal home sales were foreclosures”

    Yet the state and feds are stalling foreclosures causing sales to drop by 55% and put pressure on prime homeowners to drastically drop their price.

    “Bargains and bargain hunters have kept this market alive,” the DataQuick press release quoted company President John Walsh as saying”

    I hate to break the bad news to John Walsh, but these aren’t bargains, these are the real prices that the population can actually afford with a 30 year fixed.

    These so called bargains will become the median price next year.

  • charlene says:
    December 16, 2008 at 5 pm

    Here you go

  • Buy Houses Now! says:
    December 17, 2008 at 6 am

    Actually this reflects lenders catching up on backlog from the CA law that went into effect in September that required additional notices from them before foreclosing. They did their 60 days’ worth of notices and foreclosed on the backlog en masse.

    Foreclosures will probably go down in the near future, once this artificial hump is passed. It will be interesting to see if the massive price decreases in Nov are here to stay, though.

  • great depression 2 says:
    December 17, 2008 at 11 am

    In 2005 50% of us gdp came from the overvalued housing market. Now watch as trillions in option arms resets in 2009. The experts were all wrong and should go flip burgers.

  • Mr Mortgage says:
    December 18, 2008 at 5 am

    the massive house price depreciation piece of this story is exactly why even 1% mortgage rates will do nothing to save the home owner via a refi. From recent research I have done over the past week with LO’s up and down the state, 80% of all refi applications being taken in the past three weeks since rates fell from 6% are not getting out of the starting gate to to value problems. Now the nuclear option of no-appraisal refis will have to be implemented. That is the real nightmare for the future of housing.