San Diego County home prices in April rose for a second month after nine months of declines — and it is happening with very few sales.
The median home price rose 1.9 percent to $805,000, said CoreLogic data released Tuesday. It is still down 1.8 percent for the year as rising interest rates slowed the red-hot pandemic real estate market.
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San Diego’s recent price climb is happening with very few transactions. There were 2,408 home sales in April, down 53 percent from the year before. It also marks the second-lowest sales figure for an April in records dating to 1988.
Mark Goldman, a real estate analyst with C2 Financial Corp., said homeowners don’t see the point in selling now, considering they will likely face much higher interest rates at a new home, and a lot of competitive buyers. While interest rates might have priced some San Diegans out, he said the group of buyers hunting for homes now are fighting it out for limited supply — pushing prices up.
“The market’s active but there’s just a lot less available supply,” he said. “In a market where people were getting 10 offers on their house, and now they are getting five, it is still a seller’s market.”
There were around 2,825 San Diego County homes listed for sale in April, said the Redfin Data Center, the lowest in 13 months. It’s a far cry from less than a year ago, in August, when there were nearly 6,000 homes for sale.
Goldman said we are now entering the busy summer buying season and he didn’t see a lot of reasons why the number of homes for sale would change much.
“People who are waiting for prices to come down will be disappointed,” he said.
Chris Anderson, a San Diego County real estate agent for more than three decades, said the homes she is listing are getting multiple offers over the asking price. She put a 1,125-square-foot, two-bedroom townhouse in Santee on the market for $539,900 in late April and had five offers, two over the asking price, in less than two weeks. Anderson also had a three-bedroom $550,000 townhouse, at 1,498-square-feet, that got an offer over the asking price almost instantly and was off the market in two days. Both properties are in escrow so final prices are not yet public.
Anderson said the sellers of properties were both moving out of state. The Santee seller was going to Missouri, she said, and the Ramona seller was heading to Colorado.
She is also working with buyers and seeing how tough things are from the other side. Anderson said she has a military family that has written 28 offers since January with no success. Because they are using a VA loan, it is difficult for the young couple, with a newborn, to compete. Unlike conventional loans, VA loans require appraisals and termite clearances, which most buyers they are competing against are waiving.
San Diego County’s median — the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less — combines resale and newly built single-family homes, condos and townhouses. Here’s how the different home types fared in April:
- Resale single-family: Median of $900,000 with 1,416 sales, up from $880,000 last month. Down from its peak of $950,000 in April 2022.
- Resale condo: Median of $651,000, with 777 sales, up from $650,000 last month. Down from its peak of $663,000 in May 2022.
- Newly built: Median of $798,000 with 168 sales, down from $801,000 last month. This figure combines single-family homes, townhouses and condos. It is down from the peak of $890,500 in August 2022.
The price of a typical San Diego County home has jumped significantly with higher interest rates. The interest rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was 6.34 percent in the last week of April, said Freddie Mac, up from 5.1 percent the year before. The monthly cost of an $805,000 San Diego home (assuming 20 percent down) would have been about $3,780 with last year’s interest rates, compared to around $4,290 in April.
Here’s a look at the median prices across Southern Californian markets for April:
Los Angeles County: Monthly rise of 0.1 percent to $800,000; down 7 percent for the year.
Orange County: Monthly rise of 0.3 percent to $988,000; down 5.9 percent for the year.
San Bernardino County: Monthly drop of 6.3 percent to $450,000; down 9.1 percent for the year.
San Diego County: Monthly rise of 1.9 percent to $805,000; down 1.8 percent for the year.
Ventura County: Monthly decrease of 0.1 percent to $774,000; down 3.6 percent for the year.
