Based on Octobers home sales report a new market time report has been released. Market time is based
on home many months it would theoretically take to sell all the inventory in the local MLA for-sale listings at the current pace of home buying.
Two years ago it would have taken 13.31 months for buyers to purchase all available homes for sale but currently the market time is only 2.38 months.
Homes listed for under a million dollars have a significantly lower market time than homes asking for 7 figures. The market time for homes listed for under $1 million is 1.9 months compared to 8.8 months for homes listed for more than $1 million.
Throughout the county short sales - a sale of a home for less than is owed on its mortgage – are up.

The rise is shorts sales may help explain the increase in home transactions at a time when they are usually falling. Usually home sales decrease after August but this year the number of homes sold increased from August to September. Short sales often take longer to close so it may be sales from the summer are being carried over into September and October.
Short sales increased from 293 in January to 477 in September – a 63% increase in 9 months. Short sales are increasing while the number of distressed sales have been declining in the past year.
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Throughout the county short sales - a sale of a home for less than is owed on its mortgage – are up. 
The rise is shorts sales may help explain the increase in home transactions at a time when they are usually falling. Usually home sales decrease after August but this year the number of homes sold increased from August to September. Short sales often take longer to close so it may be sales from the summer are being carried over into September and October.
Short sales increased from 293 in January to 477 in September – a 63% increase in 9 months. Short sales are increasing while the number of distressed sales have been declining in the past year.
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From mid-September to mid-October, 2,836 residences were purchased in Orange County – a 2.3% increase
from 2008.
September marked the 15th straight month of sales gains vs. the year-ago period, which followed 33 consecutive months where sales failed to beat the previous year’s pace.
The average selling price of homes during this period was $430,000 which is a 2.4% increase from last year.
Single family homes are reselling for 33% less than their peak pricing while condos are currently selling for 35% below their peak in March 2006.
For the first time in three years local homebuilder Standard Pacific Homes came out of the red. They reported a
net loss of $23.8 million during the third quarter which was 94% smaller than the year before – although slightly bigger than the previous quarter.
Standard Pacific Homes revenues fell 18% in the July-September quarter due to a combination of a 9% drop in the company’s average sale price and fewer homes for the company to sell. Last quarter the average Standard Pacific Home sold for $302,000 compared to $332,000 the year before.
From a development standpoint sales were up from last year. The company averaged 2.2 home sales a month per development compared to 1.7 per development in 2008. Standard Pacific Homes was also able to able to pay down $348 million in short-term debt through a combination or stocks swaps and issuance of longer term notes.
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