Southern California’s housing market is on the rebound. SoCal’s median sales price reached $385,000 last month, up 4.6 percent from May and the highest dollar amount in more than five years. It’s a rapid increase. Home prices were up 28.3 percent last month compared to a year ago, according to real-estate information firm DataQuick. The jump is greater than “any year-over-year pop seen during the housing boom and the most since January 1989, the first time DataQuick generated the figure,” says the Los Angeles Times.
“This market’s getting really interesting,” DataQuick President John Walsh said Wednesday in a news release announcing the figures. (LA Times)
The growing housing market in Southern California explains rise in builders’ confidence in the U.S. “A housing market index by the National Assn. of Home Builders rose six points to a reading of 57 in July. Any reading above 50 indicates that more builders view conditions favorably than not,” says the Los Angeles Times. It was the third consecutive increase, and the strongest level for the index since January 2006.
Despite the increase in home prices, the actual number of sales of houses in Southern California and L.A. County was down compared with the previous month and with June, 2012.
But after a frenetic few months, the market may be stabilizing. “Dataquick notes that buyers paying with cash fell slightly in June and lending activity is picking up. Also, there are signs that more homes are being put on the market, which is really what’s needed in order to create better parity between sellers and buyers. A single month does not make a trend, but these adjustments bear watching,” reports LA Observed.
Of course, whether or not you can afford a house, you still need to earn $350,000 a year to “live well” in L.A., according to Esquire.