As SoCal home listings plunge, prices perk up

The number of homes for sale across Southern California has plunged, pushing up housing prices as demand outpaces supply.

Listing inventory fell 41 percent over the past eight months, spurring rising homebuyer competition, with the median price up 5 percent since January, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported, citing figures from CoreLogic.

Although sales and prices are below last year in the wake of rising interest rates, they’ve inched up the past two months heading into the spring home shopping season.

The median price of a SoCal home fell 2.1 percent to $705,000 during the 12 months ending in March, according to CoreLogic. But the market is mixed.

On the one hand, last month’s median was down 7 percent from an all-time high of $760,000 in the spring of last year.

On the other hand, it’s up 5 percent from January, when median prices dipped to a recent low of $670,000.

Meanwhile, home sales across the region were down 37.5 percent to 15,307 transactions last month, CoreLogic figures show. That’s the second-lowest tally for a March in records dating back 36 years.

But then sales ticked back up, climbing more than 50 percent since January.

“While Southern California home sales activity is still trending notably below 2022 levels, the seasonal rebound and falling mortgage rates have attracted more buyers to the market,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Selma Hepp said in a statement. 

“Many sellers are still on the sidelines, keeping the inventory of for-sale homes in the region consistently low,” she said. “Due to the shortage of homes on the market, both home prices and market competition have bounced back.”

Demand — and price jumps — are highest for entry-level homes, according to a recent Zillow analysis.

Prices were unchanged from the same time last year in the bottom third of the Los Angeles and Orange County market, but fell 6 percent year-over-year in the top tier of L.A./OC homes, the analysis showed.

In the Inland Empire, bottom-tier home prices rose 1 percent from a year ago, but fell 4 percent for the top one-third of the market.

“First-time buyers are facing a tough market right now,” Zillow Senior Economist Nicole Bachaud told the Press-Telegram. “Affordability is not on their side as prices remain high and have started to rise again this spring.”

While the number of homes selling at or above the asking price is lower than a year ago, both Redfin and the California Association of Realtors report that sales-to-list-price ratios have improved in the past couple of months.

— Dana Bartholomew