Costa Mesa Market Update 2012 Q1

Costa Mesa, CA real estate market update for the first quarter of 2012. Looking back over the past 90 days there were 146 Costa Mesa Homes sold. The majority of these sales were for Costa Mesa single family homes (104 sales), with Costa Mesa Condos only accounting for 42 sales. According to Dataquick the median price for a Costa Mesa Home was $425,000 for the month of December 2011, the month of the most recent data. That $425,000 median price is a 10.99% decline vs the same reporting time of December of 2011.

As of February 1 there were 186 Costa Mesa Homes for sale in the local MLS, this number equates to 3.8 months of inventory. There is still a strong demand for Costa Mesa Real Estate, mostly due to historical low interest rates. According to Freddimac, the average rate for a 30 year fixed mortgage is currently at 3.98%. While demand is strong the single biggest drag continues to be the effect of short sales has on the market. Short sales accounted for 49 of the 146 closed sales over the past 90 days. However, these short sales account for 59 current listings, when including those listings which are in backup status, meaning they have an offer but are accepting other offers, the number of short sale listings is over 100 or about half of all Costa Mesa Homes for sale. The reason this is a huge drag is that Costa Mesa Short sales are currently taking 5.5 months to close, with some taking in excess of 18 months. While short sales account for almost half the current inventory, REO's (actually owned by the bank) only accounts for 16 of the current Costa Mesa homes for sale.