San Diego County’s median home price increased to $740,000 in September as the number of homes for sale dropped and competition for properties heated up.

Prices are up 13.8% in a year, said CoreLogic/DQNews. September’s numbers marked a change of pace after two months of declines, but the median price is still shy of its peak of $749,750 reached in June.

Housing analysts tied much of the decline the past few months to a steady increase in the number of homes for sale, which reduced competition and bidding wars. However, inventory once again decreased in September and the price started to climb.

Alan Gin, an economist at the University of San Diego, said a basic supply and demand imbalance is pushing up prices, and he didn’t see much changing for the rest of the year.

“Buyers are just scrambling over fewer available properties,” he said.

Gin said home inventory seemed to be playing a bigger factor in rising prices, at the moment, than marginally increasing mortgage rates. He said if mortgage rates go up significantly, it will be a factor, but rates have not gone up enough to deter buyers.

The number of homes for sale in San Diego County continues to remain at historic lows. There were 4,016 homes for sale from Aug. 30 to Sept. 26. That compares to around 5,512 active listings around the same time in 2020; 8,140 in 2019; and 9,356 in 2018.

Across the United States, there are also fewer homes for sale as well as rising prices. So it is tougher to find a place to live outside of California, too, compared to a few years ago. National home prices were up 19.7 percent in July, said the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices.

All types of housing in San Diego experienced growth this year, but condo prices have seen the largest rise in the last few months. September’s median price for a resale condo was $565,000, which ties the all-time high reached the previous month.
The median for a resale single-family house was $831,250, down from a peak of $840,000 in July. The newly built median, which includes new houses, condos and townhouses, was $715,000. That is short of the record of $812,500 in October 2018, which reflected an increase in luxury single-family homes for sale.

Price gains across Southern California have cooled compared to other points in the pandemic. San Diego County had the biggest month-over-month gain at 2.1 percent. It was followed by Los Angeles County, which was up 1.3 percent for a median of $795,000; and Riverside County up 0.4 percent for a median of $527,000. Ventura County’s price was down 2.1 percent for a median of $725,000; Orange County was down 1.1 percent for a median of $890,000; and San Bernardino County was down 0.4 percent for a median of $463,000.

Source: SDuniontribune by Phillip Molnar