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October 18, 2011

Southern California Real Estate Market Flat in September
DataQuick, the San Diego, California-based housing market information provider, said on Thursday that Southern California real estate stalled in September, with sales essentially flat and the median sales price declining from the same month a year earlier. Overall sales in the region, including new and existing home sales, rose 0.3 percent from the previous September to a total of 18,149 homes. The miniscule increase is particularly disappointing considering that the market was coming off the expired tax credit for homebuyers that boosted sales throughout the summer of 2010.

Compared to August, sales were down 7.7 percent, but that sort of decline is seen most years, as most families do their house shopping in the summer, before the beginning of school. About a third of previously occupied homes sold in the region were foreclosures, which contributed to declining prices. The median sales price for homes sold in the region in September was $280,000, just over 5 percent down from a year earlier and up just 0.4 percent from August.

With the overall economy struggling, and the job market refusing to budge from its 9.1 percent unemployment rate, experts do not expect conditions in the housing market to improve any time soon. The market is still feeling the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis and the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, which has come to be known as the Great Recession. Making matters worse, many potential homebuyers are unable to qualify for mortgages because lenders have raised their standards to avoid the type of mass defaults that fueled the mortgage crisis in the first place.

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