California News Blog

The South Orange County real estate market is, not surprisingly, quite similar to the real estate market of Orange County at large. The statistics and numbers for the two regions are commonly considered jointly, since the distinction between North and South Orange County is largely colloquial and generally not recognized on a statistically official level. If one looks simply at the raw numbers for South Orange County, it seems that the region has been going through a consistent recovery for the last several months. This is not quite as impressive, however, when one considers that this relatively short recovery is, first, based largely off of a deceptively complicated statistic – home sales – and was immediately preceded by a period of negative growth more than twice as long in duration.

According to a September 15, 2009 article in the Mercury News, home sales in a six county region including Orange County, and, of course, Southern Orange County declined slightly in the month of August. This is a bad sign for South Orange County real estate, as the article noted, stating that “Home sales in the six-county Southern California region declined 10.8 percent in August compared with July, while the median price rose slightly, a real estate information service said Tuesday. San Diego-based MDA DataQuick attributed the sales dip to thinning inventory of foreclosure properties and financial uncertainty among potential buyers…MDA DataQuick said the month-to-month decline was unusual because an increase for the season is normal.”

Unfortunately, like many things in real estate, there was no clear message regarding the future of South Orange County homes for sale, since a September 16th, 2009 article in the Insurance Journal found almost exactly the opposite using the same set of statistics. According to the article, “Southern California home sales rose for the 11th consecutive month in May as sales of $500,000-plus homes started to come back…The median price paid increased slightly from the prior month for the first time since July 2007, the result of a shift in market activity where sales of deeply discounted foreclosures waned and mid-to-high-end purchases rose.”