Firm: Home sales in California dip in April from previous year; prices increase

Firm: California home sales dip in April

LOS ANGELES — Home sales in California dipped 1.3 percent from a year ago, with the biggest declines occurring in inland areas that had been fueling the market’s rebound, a tracking firm reported Thursday.

Escrow closed on 37,481 homes last month, down from 37,967 in April 2009, San Diego-based MDA DataQuick said.

Last month’s sales volume was up 0.5 percent from 37,295 in March.

DataQuick also said the median home price for the state was $255,000 in April, unchanged from March and up 15.4 percent from $221,000 in April 2009, when prices reached their low for the current cycle.

Last month’s year-over-year increase was the sixth in a row, following 27 months of declines.

DataQuick president John Walsh said the difficulty of potential buyers getting so-called “jumbo” loans — generally defined as loans in excess of $417,000 — was a factor tamping down sales, especially in high-priced coastal neighborhoods.

“For months we’ve seen growing signs of a recovery taking hold,” he said. “But plenty of challenges remain.”

Another reason for the decline could be buyers delaying their purchases to take advantage of a new state tax credit that became effective May 1, he said.

In coastal Marin County, sales increased 40.8 percent last month to 245 from the year-ago-level, while sales jumped 25.2 percent to 556 in San Mateo County and 11.6 percent to 2,669 in Orange County.

In inland counties, sales declined 17.6 percent to 591 in Solano County, 13.3 percent to 469 in Sonoma County, and 12.3 percent in San Bernardino County.

Stuart Gabriel, who directs the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the drop in inland sales showed prices have rebounded from the low levels that drew crowds of bargain hunters during the recovery’s earliest phases.

“The pricing isn’t as attractive as it was a while back and prices have stabilized and the deals aren’t nearly as plentiful as they were six months or a year ago,” he said. “The diminished pace of sales is in and of itself a signal of the emerging normalization of those markets.”

DataQuick spokesman Andrew LePage attributed sales decrease to the dwindling supply of foreclosed homes that had been selling briskly a year ago. Statewide, foreclosures comprised 38.1 percent of resales last month, down from 54.6 percent a year ago.

In a nine-county region of Northern California, sales dipped 1.9 percent to 7,003 in April from a year earlier. In the six-county region of Southern California, sales dropped 1 percent to 20,299 from April 2009 .

The median home price in Northern California increased 21.7 percent to $370,000 last month from $304,000 in April 2009. In Southern California, the median price rose 15.4 percent to $285,000, up from $247,000 in the year-ago period.