As seen on DQNEWS.com
Southern California home sales surged in July, rising to an eight-year high for that month as buyers found more homes for sale. The median sale price held steady with the prior month but rose nearly 26 percent from a year earlier, marking the seventh consecutive month with a year-over-year gain exceeding 20 percent, a real estate information service reported.
A total of 25,419 new and resale houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month. That was up 17.6 percent from 21,608 sales in June, and up 23.5 percent from 20,588 sales in July 2012, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.
Last month’s sales approached a historically normal level. They were 0.5 percent below the average number of sales – 25,541 – in the month of July since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics begin. Southland sales haven’t been above average for any particular month in more than seven years.
The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the six-county region last month was $385,000, the same as in June and up 25.8 percent from $306,000 in July 2012. The June and July medians are the highest for any month since April 2008, when the median was also $385,000.
The median price has risen on a year-over-year basis for 16 consecutive months, with those annual gains ranging between 10.8 percent and 28.3 percent over the past 12 months. July’s median remained 23.8 percent below the peak $505,000 median in spring/summer 2007. The median fell by $256,000 from that peak to its $249,000 trough in April 2009, and it has now regained just over half – 51.8 percent – of that peak-to-trough loss.
In a sign of continued market confidence, Southern California home buyers continue to put near-record amounts of their own money into residential real estate. In July they paid a total of $5.39 billion out of their own pockets in the form of down payments or cash purchases. That was up from $5.25 billion in June and up from $3.61 billion a year ago.
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