Tracking firm: Southern California median home price posts first year-on-year jump since 2007

Firm: Southern Calif. home price rises in December

LOS ANGELES — The median home price in Southern California posted its first year-on-year gain last month since the summer of 2007, as more high-priced homes in relatively expensive neighborhoods continued to enter a market that had been dominated by lower-end sales, a tracking firm said Tuesday.

San Diego-based MDA DataQuick said the median home price in the six-county region of Southern California was $289,000 in December, up 4 percent from $278,000 in December 2008. The price also represented a roughly 1 percent bump up from November’s $285,000 median.

The sales of higher value homes, combined with a leveling off of prices in more affordable inland communities, had pulled the median out of the monthslong nosedive seen following the market’s collapse, said DataQuick president John Walsh.

“That simple shift of what’s selling and what’s not selling puts upward pressure on the median,” he said. “But we’ve also seen price floors, however temporary, form in many areas recently as the foreclosure inventory dwindled and buyers took advantage of lower prices, lower mortgage rates and tax credits.”

DataQuick also said home sales increased more than 12 percent from a year ago to more than 22,300, making for 18 consecutive months of year-on-year gains.

The largest gains were seen in high-end markets that saw few sales last year, such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Newport Beach, while more affordable inland areas that had robust 2008 sales recorded year-over-year declines last month, DataQuick said.

The positive sales data came as a relief to observers who feared that this month’s National Association of Realtors figures showing a dip in December’s pending home purchases would portend weak activity in the Southern California market as well.

“I think the main reason Southern California is holding up pretty well is that the price declines that we have seen so far are proving enough of a stimulus to generate relatively good sales,” said G.U. Krueger, an economist at research and consulting firm HousingEcon.com. “That’s a positive sign that the market mechanism is working.”

Foreclosures comprised nearly 40 percent of resales last month, down from almost 54 percent in December 2008, but up nearly a percent from November’s figure.

The increase marked the first month-to-month increase in foreclosed homes’ share of the resale market since February.

Krueger said he expected the number of foreclosures to continue to rise, pointing to an increasing number of homeowners who have received notices of default or other foreclosure-related notices.

Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. reported this month that the number of households nationwide that received such notices in December increased 14 percent from November.

“It matches expectations that there should be an increase in foreclosure sales as we move into 2010,” Krueger said.