Housing market starts 2017 strong

January was a solid month for home sales in Southern California.

A total of 15,422 new and previously occupied houses and condominiums were sold in the six-county region last month, the most sold in during January since 2013, Irvine-based CoreLogic reported Monday.

That marked a 24.6 percent drop from December but a 5.4 percent increase year-over-year.

The sharp decline in sales month-over-month was due to seasonal factors and is not an indication that the Southern California housing market – the Inland Empire plus Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties – is weakening.

Typically, the average change in sales between those two months is a drop of 27.6 percent, according to CoreLogic’s monthly housing report.

“Southern California home sales were the highest for a January in four years despite a spike in mortgage interest rates after the November election,” Andrew LePage, research analyst with CoreLogic, said in a statement. “Many of the homebuyers whose deals were recorded in January would have been out shopping in November and December during a rising-rate environment that might have spurred some to buy sooner rather than later.”

In the Inland Empire, sales were up 4.1 percent in Riverside County and 17.8 percent in San Bernardino County compared with January 2016.

The median price of a home in Riverside County in January was $330,000, in San Bernardino County $283,000. Those were year-over-year increases of 6.5 percent and 6.8 percent respectively, CoreLogic reported.