Housing market hits a bump in the road

Single-family home sales in Southern California fell in November, as potential buyer struggled with higher prices and a shrinking supply of homes on the market.

Sales in the six-county region dropped 10.4 percent last month compared with November 2012, according to DataQuick in San Diego.

While sales dropped dramatically, the median sales price – $385,000 – stayed more or less where it’s been for the past six months, but that number was still up 19.9 percent compared with November of last year, according to DataQuick, which tracks the Southern California housing market.

The November median price was 23.8 percent below the median peak price of $505,000 that was reached in the spring and summer of 2007, when the Southern California housing market was sizzling.

All in all, an “underwhelming” month, but not one that was completely unexpected, said John Walsh, DataQuick president.

Besides a lack of available houses, possible reasons for the drop in sales include investment buyers withdrawing from the market and all categories of buyers pulling in their horns because of the government shutdown in October, Walsh said.

“Any pullback in home buying during the early-October fiasco in Washington, D.C., would have undermined November closings, and we know investor and cash buying continued to drop,” Walsh said in a statement.

On the sales side of the ledger, the Inland Empire housing market last month mirrored the Southern California market. Sales were down 10.4 percent in Riverside County and 7.6 percent in San Bernardino County.

Median prices, however, were another matter. The $275,000 price in Riverside County represented a 20.10 percent increase compared with November of last year, while the $218,500 price tag in San Bernardino was a 19.4 percent year-to-year jump in that market, according to DataQuick.

Both the Southern California and the Inland housing markets are reacting to the market forces that housing markets usually react to, like unemployment and interest rates, said John Karevoll, a DataQuick analyst.

“The November numbers didn’t show much of a change,” Karevoll said. “They were really more of a plateau. The market is being pushed back to a point of equilibrium, which is a good thing.”