Orange County Housing Market Update:

Informative for Californian and specially for

O.C homeowner;

According to Orange County Association of Realtors,  pending home sales in Southern California posted back-to-back double-digit year-over-year gains, a positive trend to be sure. In Orange County, Pending Sales were up 11.1 percent for detached homes and up 8.3 percent for attached properties compared with May last year. Although overall inventory levels should continue to rise throughout the summer months, Orange County's current supply of homes is too low to meet demand. In May, the inventory of detached homes was down 15.6 percent to 4,797, and the inventory of attached homes was down 26.6 percent to 2,474 versus a year ago. Compared with this time last year, months' supply of inventory was down 20 percent to 3.2 months for detached homes and down 26.5 percent to 2.5 months for attached homes. Tight inventory has resulted in fierce competition for existing listings, with many properties attracting multiple offers and some even becoming the subject of old fashioned bidding wars.
Not surprisingly, we are seeing a corresponding increase in home prices. In May, the Median Sales Price was up 4.8 percent to $712,750 for detached homes and up 6 percent to $415,000 for attached. It should be noted that, in April, the share of equity-or non-distressed property sales edged up to account for 91.6 percent of all home sales in California, the highest percentage since 2007.