O.C. Home Prices Top the $500,000 Mark

From the Orange County Business Journal article by Mark Muller:

The median price of an existing Orange County home inched back above the $500,000 mark in November, although the pace of sales here remained weak.

The median price for an existing stand-alone home sold here in November was $502,170, the California Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

That’s a 2.9% increase from October and a 0.6% increase from the median price homes here were selling at a year earlier.

Prices here have been hovering near the $500,000 mark for much of the past year.

The county’s median sales price now is up about 19% from the recent bottom of the market seen in January 2009, according to the association’s figures.

Prices here still are off nearly 33% from the peak of the market when the median sales price for an OC home topped $747,000 in April 2007.

The number of OC home sales in November was down 4% from a month earlier, the Realtor association said. Sales were down more than 14% from a year earlier.

The median sales price of an existing home in California was $296,820 in November, a 2.4% decrease from October and a 2.4% increase from a year earlier, according to the association.

It was the first time the state’s median price fell below the $300,000 mark since February.

Sales in all of California were up nearly 9% from October’s levels, but were off nearly 9% from a year earlier.

The number of active listings declined in November from October, particularly for homes priced above $500,000, according to the Realtor association.

The association excludes condominiums from its figures.

Including condos, the median price of an OC home sold in November was $435,000, a less than $2,000 drop from October, and a 0.6% increase from a year ago, according to a report last week from San Diego-based MDA DataQuick, a unit of Canada’s MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates.