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Laguna Woods Market
Updated 2-15-2012
Laguna Woods home sales were flat in January. After several months of steady increases, sales volume in the community was dead even with January 2011, according to MDA DataQuick, an independent market research firm.
The median price of a home in Laguna Woods stood at $206,000 in January, down more than 9 percent from the same period last year.
“January numbers have never been very good at providing an indication of what upcoming activity will be like. For that we need to wait until March. What we can determine is that the mortgage market remains dysfunctional,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.
Across Orange County in January the median home price was $392,000, down more than 5 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Sales volume fell 3 percent from a year ago.
The pace of sales were better throughout the rest of Southern California, rising a fraction of a percent. But the median price of a home was down almost 4 percent to $260,000 for the combined Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and San Diego counties market.
Mortgage interest rates continued to hit record lows in January. The average rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage again dipped below 4 percent -- the lowest since Freddie Mac's data collection started in 1971.
"It will be interesting to see how a potential surge of refinance activity plays into the purchase market once the administration’s new guidelines are implemented,” said DataQuick's Walsh.
Chapman University economists predict that Orange County home prices will stay virtually even in 2012, with no more than a 0.2 percent gain.
“Our forecast calls for the median selling price of a single-family unit … (to) remain flat in Orange County in 2012,” according to the forecast from the school’s A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research.
“More problematic is the inventory of unsold homes,” the report added. “Not only are there still too many unsold housing units in the market, there are a large number of homes in the foreclosure process that will keep the supply of resale housing units at an elevated level.”
Statewide Market Analysis
(From the California Association of Realtors)
Lower home prices and record-low interest rates in the third quarter of 2011 contributed to an improvement in housing affordability for California home buyers.
The percentage of home buyers who could afford to purchase a median-priced, existing single-family home in California rose to 52 percent in the third quarter of 2011, up from 51 percent in second-quarter 2011 and was up from 46 percent in the third quarter of 2010, according to CAR.
In other news, UCLA economists forecast statewide home prices rising steadily over the next six years, although the recovery in home sales isn’t projected to begin until 2013.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast calls California a "bifurcated" state, one in which the coastal regions continue to grow out of the depths of the recession, while the inland regions suffer from economic "doldrums."
The economists predicted that the median price of an existing single-family home will increase 52.5 percent by 2017, rising to $438,980.
Home prices are projected to turn around in 2012 — jumping 11.5 percent to $321,138, then rising 10 percent more in 2013 to $353,411. The recovery is expected to run through 2017.
But prices will remain below the housing market’s 2006 peak of $560,408 more than 10 years down the road.
National Market Analysis
(From the National Association of Realtors)
Mortgage interest rates dropped to new record lows in January. But despite the consequent affordability of housing, it's still difficult to qualify for loans.
"A significant share of investors is purchasing properties via all-cash transactions. All-cash purchases represented 30 percent of all home sales transactions across the country,” said NAR economist Lawrence Yun.
U.S. housing market prices may fall further under the weight of foreclosures and not rebound until 2013, even as the economy builds momentum and mortgage rates fall to record lows, according to a survey of 109 economists by Zillow. When values do rise, the gains probably won't match those seen in the years before the bursting of the bubble in 2006.
Values have increased 3.1 percent since bottoming out in March, though more than a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage are "underwater," or owe more than their property is worth. U.S. home values probably had their smallest decrease in four years in 2011, according to Zillow, whose survey found that prices may find their floor in late 2012 or early 2013 and will begin rising by 3 percent a year through 2016.
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Laguna Woods and Orange County news
(From the Orange County Association of Realtors)
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