PEP OUT OF HOME-PRICE RISES SALES ALSO SHOW MARKET NOW IN COOLING-DOWN MODE.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Staff Writer

The median home price across Southern California edged up to a record-high $480,000 in February, but the annual increase was the weakest in months, and sales fell to their lowest level in five years, an industry tracker said Tuesday.

The narrowing appreciation and sales continued to demonstrate that the once-hot residential real estate market has cooled significantly, said the report from La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.

Last month 19,905 new and previously owned homes and condominiums were sold across the six-county region from Ventura to San Diego, down 7 percent from a year earlier and 0.9 percent from January.

A decline from January to February is normal. February's sales total was the lowest for that month since 2001, when 18,040 homes were sold.

The strongest February in DataQuick's statistics was in 2004, when 23,004 homes were sold. The weakest was in 1991, when 10,025 homes were sold.

The price increase, an annual 12.9 percent, was the smallest since a 12.7 percent gain in March 2002.

"It's numbers like these that both bubble theorists and market cheerleaders can pounce on to make their points. Reality is more mundane," said DataQuick's president, Marshall Prentice.

He notes that the market frenzy is past, and buyers and sellers are entering a new phase of the residential real estate cycle.

A clearer picture of the new trend should emerge next month, Prentice said.

Annual price gains ranged from a low of 6.4 percent in San Diego County to a high of 27.7 percent in San Bernardino County, the most affordable market in the region, with a median price of $373,000.

But prices have been basically flat for about six months, and San Diego has seen single-digit increases for 10 consecutive months.

DataQuick's report showed that:

In Los Angeles County, sales fell an annual 9.2 percent, and the median price increased 15.6 percent to $490,000.

Ventura County's median price increased 18.6 percent to $618,000, and sales fell 8.8 percent to 804 transactions.

"I find these numbers to be fairly comforting," said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll. "There's probably a fairly good balance between supply and demand."

The typical monthly mortgage payment that buyers committed to paying in February was $2,251, up from $2,162 in January and from $1,905 a year earlier, according to the company.

Adjusted for inflation, current payments are about 2.7 percent above typical payments in the spring of 1989, the peak of the previous real estate cycle.

Unlike then, indicators of market distress are still largely absent, the company reported. Financing with adjustable-rate mortgages has dropped significantly during the last three months as those rates moved closer to what is being charged for longer-term home loans.

And foreclosure activity is edging up from its bottom, but is still low. Down-payment sizes are stable, as are flipping rates and buying of homes not to be occupied by owners.

Karevoll expects the market to be wobbly for the next few months.

Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said that the economy is on sound footing and sees no signs of the kind of collapse that chilled the market in the early 1990s. But he, too, agrees that the peak is past.

"The character of the market has changed," Kyser said. "We have to see what the course is over the next couple of months."

greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com

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