Southern California has surely become a seller's market for home owners. Real estate tracker Core Logic reports last month the region had the highest number of sales, for the month of March, that have been seen 10 years.
The company Core Logic tracks home sales and home prices throughout California. They released a report about housing prices and sales in the six Southern California counties of San Diego, Riverside, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Los Angeles. The median price for the region in March 2017 was $480,000, and that was the highest median home price Southern California has seen since August 2007.
The median home price for San Diego County was $515,000.
The overall region saw home sales increase 7.8 percent compared to March of the previous year. The median home price went up 7.1 percent overall. San Bernardino County had the biggest year-over-year gain in value, with prices there up 12.1 percent compared to March of 2016.
Southern California also saw a big monthly spike in home sales this March, with 48 percent more homes selling in March than in February. But Core Logic analyst Andrew LaPage warned that we should keep these results in perspective.
He said there is typically a good sized jump in sales between February and March. And while home prices are approaching the levels we saw right before the housing bust of the previous decade, it is a somewhat different story ten years later.
"In inflation-adjusted terms, the median home sale price in Southern California is still 16 percent below its peak level from the last housing boom," said LaPage.
Home prices of $500,000 or more accounted for nearly fifty percent of all sales in March 2017.
