HOME SALES SOAR IN VALLEY\13% surge in January linked to pent-up demand; prices remain soft.Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer Sales of single family homes in the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. jumped 13 percent during January but prices remained soft, a trade group reported Monday. Last month 721 homes closed escrow, the highest level for January in six years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time San Fernando Valley Association of Realtors said. The median price, the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less, was $164,000, a decline of 0.6 percent from the year-ago level. Realtors said pent-up demand, which has increased as prices have declined during the past year, boosted sales. But they are not ready to say a full-blown recovery is under way in the otherwise slumping market. January's sales fell 8.2 percent from December's level. "We've had other false starts, but the prerequisites of recovery appear to be in place - a rising, stable economy, job growth, eager buyers, a growing inventory of homes for sale and favorable interest rates," said John E. Maquar, association president. Analyst Gary Stockton at Dataquick Information Services See Information Systems. , a real estate market research group, said not too much can be made of one month's worth of results. "I hate to make a projection on one month, but it's better than last year by a significant margin. There have been lots of mixed signals lately and maybe this is one of them," Stockton said. Market activity during January 1995 suffered from a series of severe winter storms that battered Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, and it rained last month, too, though not as long nor as hard. Still a 13 percent increase is pretty impressive, said Jack Kyser, chief economist The Chief Economist is a single position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis. It is distinguished from the other economist positions by the broader scope of responsibility encompassing the at the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County. And the slight bump down in median prices may indicate that market has hit bottom for that statistical category. "It's even more impressive considering that January is not one of the months when people are thinking about going out and buying a home," Kyser said. Meanwhile, the condominium condominium In modern property law, individual ownership of one dwelling unit within a multidwelling building. Unit owners have undivided ownership interest in the land and those portions of the building shared in common. market started the year with a huge gain over January 1994. Last month escrow closed on 196 condominiums, up 64.7 percent from January 1995. And prices rose, too. The median price for a condo last month was $110,111, up 17.8 percent from the year-ago period. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion