In this exclusive OC180NEWS biweekly report, we take a macro view of countywide market conditions for Orange County residential real estate as of January 5, 2012. Even though market time slipped Slightly, after considering seasonality, the market was stable during the most recent two weeks.
The leading indicator of market conditions on which we place the most value is market time, aka, the relationship between supply and demand. At this time of year, OC real estate market activity goes into its deepest slump of the year and this year is no different.
The total number of homes on the market fell from 8,377 two weeks earlier, to 8,114 as of January 5, 2012. That’s a drop of 3.1% in two weeks. During the same two weeks, demand dropped from 2,456 to 2,220, a drop of 9.6%. The greater decrease in demand, in comparison to supply, or inventory, caused market time to increase from 3.41 months, to 3.65 months as of January 5, 2012.
The 9.6% current period drop in demand (the number of new pending sales contracts during the last 30 days) was better than either of the two previous years. During the two weeks ending 1/6/2011, demand fell 10.9% and for the two weeks ending 1/7/2010, demand decreased by 9.9%.
Last year at this time, the residential real estate market in Orange County had finally come to the end of a long period of negative trending in the supply/demand relationship. In fact, on 1/6/2011, market time hit 5.10 months, a recent peak and generally considered to be the crossover into a buyers market.
At the beginning of last year, demand for Orange County real estate, as demonstrated by the number of buyers entering into new contracts, fell to 1,960 units, the lowest level in at least four years. At the same time fewer buyers were signing contracts, there were 9,987 homes for sale in OC, 1,873 more than today. Thus, one year ago, market time was 5.10 months and now it is 3.65 months. At the beginning of 2010, with demand at 2,265 units and 7,293 homes for sale, market time was 3.22 months.
The other key statistic we track is the number of distressed homes on the market. Since these homes represent a price lid in the market, slow transactions, and generally are not healthy for the market, the fewer distressed homes on the market, the better.
Other than a few minor exceptions, the number of distressed homes for sale in Orange County has been on a steady downward trajectory since about one year ago. On January 20, 2011, there were a total of 4,117 distressed homes on the OC real estate market. Two weeks ago, the number of distressed homes hit a new near term low and also recorded the largest drop of any two week period since March 2011.
The number of distressed homes on the market in Orange County fell by 186 units two weeks ago. After such a large decrease, we would not have been surprised if distressed homes for sale increased in the most recent reporting period. But, they fell again – not by nearly as much as two weeks ago, but a decrease nevertheless. As of 1/5/2012, there were a total of 3,137 distressed homes on the market in Orange County, down by 34 units from two weeks ago.
With the seasonal reduction in demand smaller than in either of the last two years, a market time of 3.65 months, the continuing downward trend in distressed homes, and total distressed homes on the market at the lowest level in 18 months, the Orange County market is holding steady.
In this exclusive OC180NEWS biweekly article series we report on the numbers for Orange County in total. Real estate is very local and any buying or selling decisions should be based on circumstances of specific neighborhoods. This article series is intended to provide information about countywide real estate trends in supply and demand.
All real estate data in this article is from a report provided by ReportsOnHousing.com. The analysis and text are by OC180NEWS.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading …
About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
In 
