Home buyers have hit the brakes in Orange County, with sales falling by a third since last year because of rising mortgage rates.
Residential transactions in October slipped 35 percent from the same period last year, the Orange County Business Journal reported, citing a report from CoreLogic.
The year-to-year dropoff in sales comes after a doubling of home mortgage rates, which put off many would-be buyers.
By summer, the typical house payment in OC hit $4,525 on a typical $1 million home, an increase of 49 percent over last year’s payment. June sales were down 34 percent year over year.
By July, prices edged down as sales hit a 27-year low. Bidding wars grew scarce. Sellers cut prices. Homes took longer to sell, as rising rates priced many buyers out of the market, while others waited for prices to fall.
In Orange County, sales fell 38 percent from the prior year to 2,277 transactions. By fall, a month-to-month slowdown in home sales approached double digits.
In October, 2,118 homes were sold in Orange County, down 8 percent from the previous month, according to CoreLogic.
Meanwhile, the median home price of $950,000 was unchanged from the previous month, and up 3 percent from October 2021. The typical home price in OC hit an all-time peak of $1.05 million in April.
— Dana Bartholomew
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