L.A. real estate news and insights.
Home buyers who paid cash accounted for 32% of home sales in January, marking the highest rate since 2014, the National Association of REALTORS® reports. Many leveraged the equity from a prior home sale.
Only 6% of first-time home buyers made a cash purchase in 2023 compared to 26% of repeat buyers.
There were a total of 10,887 homes on the market in January in LA County. This includes both new listings and homes that remain on the market unsold.
That was 13% below a year earlier, but an improvement from the 26% annual decline recorded in September.
Source: Zillow
Contact me for pictures.
According to the Zillow Home Value Index, home values fell in Los Angeles 0.1% between December 2023 and January 2024. Prices going down over the holidays is really no surprise as it tends to happen every year. 0.1% is far less than what I have seen in past holiday seasons.
Year over year LA home values are up 7.4%.
Some real estate experts are predicting home values could go up as much as 5% by the end of 2024.
Millennials are worried they’ll inherit properties in need of major renovations and repairs, which could further hamper affordability, a new survey shows.
Young move-up home buyers are growing increasingly worried that baby boomers, many of whom are staying put in their current home, won’t update their properties and will pass down costly renovations and repairs to the next generation of owners, according to a new study from Morning Consult and Leaf Home, a national home improvement company.
Many baby boomers are choosing not to downsize, with 68% saying they’ve lived in their homes for 30 years or more, the study shows. Many in that group admit they’ve never done renovations or replaced major appliances—and they don’t have any plans to, either.
Researchers say this could become a nightmare scenario for millennials, who may inherit or purchase these “time capsule” homes. Younger buyers’ budgets already are stretched thin by high home prices and mortgage rates. It’s difficult for many to add pricey renovations to their homebuying budget.
The National Assn. of Realtors said Friday that existing U.S. home sales totaled 4.09 million last year, an 18.7% decline from 2022. That is the weakest year for home sales since 1995 and the biggest annual decline since 2007, the start of the housing slump of the late 2000s.
In California, home sales fell 24.8% in 2023 from the previous year, the biggest drop since the 2007 housing slump, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. The state’s median home price — the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less — reached $819,740 in December, up 6.4% from a year earlier.
Source: Los Angeles Times
A December report from real estate broker Realtor.com ranked the best U.S. cities to buy a house in 2024 based on expected price growth and sales.
The annual report analyzed the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas and the final result is a list with half of the top metros in California.
10 best U.S. metro areas to buy a house in 2024:
1. Toledo, OH
2. Oxnard/Thousand Oaks/ Ventura, CA
3. Rochester, NY
4. San Diego/Chula Vista/Carlsbad, CA
5. Riverside/San Bernardino/Ontario, CA
6. Bakersfield, CA
7. Springfield, MA
8. Worcester, MA-CT
9. Grand Rapid/Kentwood, MI
10. Los Angeles/Long Beach/Anaheim, CA
The No. 2 best place in the U.S. to buy a house is Oxnard/Thousand Oaks/Ventura, California.
The California metropolitan area is expected to see existing home sales climb by 18% year-over-year. The median sale price of existing homes is expected to jump by 3.3%, according to the report.
2024 predictions:
6.1% Mortgage bankers association
6.3% National Association of Realtors
6.5% Fannie Mae
6.8% Realtor.com
The net value of property in Los Angeles County jumped 5.91% from last year to nearly $2 trillion, according to the county assessor's office.
It's the 13th consecutive year that the overall value of all taxable properties included in the more than 4,000-square-mile county has gone up, according to the Los Angeles County Assessor's 2023 Annual Report. The assessor's office estimates that it will collect $20 billion in property taxes to fund public services such as schools and medical care.
Pending home sales fell this fall to the lowest level since 2001. Pending deals dropped 8.5% year-to-year as the National Association of Realtors index fell to 71.4, the lowest mark reported since the trade group began tracking the metric in 2001.
My Take: There will be huge pent up demand in 2024.
Source: National Association of Realtors and The Real Deal
Los Angeles metro area average home price up $25,000 from April 2023 to May 2023.
Redfin found that 33.4% of buyers opted for an all-cash deal in April, the highest that mark has been since 2014.
Baby Boomers make up the largest share of those buyers with more than half of people age 58 to 76 paying in all-cash.
“Homeowners have really been the winners in that scenario … they have equity and are able to make a move with paying all cash,” Jessica Lautz, National Association of Realtors deputy chief economist and vice president of research, told Nexstar.
Another trend that stood out in the data – single women are the most likely to pay in all-cash, Lautz found.
28% single women
27% married couples
20% single men
20% unmarried couples
When it comes to the race of all-cash buyers, Lautz found that 23% were white/Caucasian, 15% Black/African-American, 8% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 8% Hispanic/Latino.
Spring 2023 has shaped up as one of the slowest-selling seasons on record for Southern California.
Low housing inventory has kept home prices afloat.
Measure ULA — also known as the “mansion tax” — was passed by L.A. voters in November 2022 to establish the city’s first dedicated stream of affordable-housing revenue. The measure adds a 4 percent tax to sales over $5 million and 5.5 percent tax to sales over $10 million.
Home sales across Southern California have fallen steeply, with the number of deals down by almost half.
Buyers closed on 13,201 single-family homes and condos in April, down 46 percent in a year, the Orange County Register reported, citing figures from CoreLogic.
It was the third biggest, year-over-year drop since records began in 1988.
The wrench in the machine is high mortgage rates and low housing inventory, with the local housing market seeing its slowest-selling April in 35 years. It was also the 18th-worst sales month total on record.
Sales in Los Angeles were down 39 percent, according to the Register.
The Southern California market has a 2.5-month supply of single-family homes waiting to be sold, 34 percent below the average since 2008.
