Real Estate
SoCal Home Prices Reach New Record High
Even as rising interest rates put the squeeze on buyers, home prices in LA and Orange County set a new record in April.
LOS ANGELES, CA — Housing prices in Southern California reached a record high in April, according to a new report by real estate data experts CoreLogic. Tight inventory is driving the record spike, which brought the median price of a Southern California home to $520,000 up 7.2 percent from the year before.
While the trend reflects the tight inventory, it hardly captures the squeeze that homebuyers are feeling these days.
"The roughly 7 percent gain in Southern California's media sale price over the past year understates the hit that homebuyers have taken, given the nearly 50 basis point rise in mortgage rates over that period," said Andrew LePage, research analyst with CoreLogic. "In April, the principal-and- interest payment on the media-priced home was up nearly 13 percent year over year."
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The jump in home prices spreads across all Southern California counties.
The median price of a home in Los Angeles County rose by 7.3 percent in April compared with the same month a year earlier, as median home prices across Southern California edged up to a record level, a real estate information service announced Wednesday.
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According to CoreLogic, the median price of a Los Angeles County home was $590,000 last month, up from $550,000 in April 2017. A total of 5,884 homes were sold in the county, down 8.2 percent from 6,413 during the same month the previous year.
In Orange County, the median price was $715,000 last month, up 5.9 percent from $675,000 in April 2017. The number of homes sold dropped by 2.1 percent, from 3,298 in April 2017 to 3,229 last month.
A total of 20,118 new and resale houses and condos changed hands in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month, according to CoreLogic. That was down 3.7 percent from 20,899 in March, and down 1.5 percent from 20,428 in April 2017.
The median price of a Southern California home was up 0.2 percent from $519,000 in March and up 7.2 percent from $485,000 in April 2017.
City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report. Photo: Shutterstock
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