The number of San Diego homes changing hands last month was down more than 29 percent from December. San Diego-based Dataquick tracks real estate trends in California. Dataquick's Andrew LePage said 2,248 homes changed hands last month. He said that is down a little more than 3 percent from a year ago.
The kinds of sales that happened don't reflect a healthy housing market, said LePage.
"The percentage of homes that were foreclosed properties rose month to month," LePage said. "The number that were sold to absentee buyers, which is mainly investors (and) some second-home buyers (and) the number of homes sold for cash was up."
La Page said traditional homes sales, where a family buys into the market or is looking to move up, are currently in the minority. He said January was the slowest month for sales in three years and it is the second slowest January sales total since 1996.
