Orange County Housing Market Summary

• Typically, the active inventory peaks in August, but this year it peaked in mid-July and has since dropped by 34 homes, now totaling 7,295. There are 128 more homes on the market compared to last year at this time.
• There are 19% fewer homes on the market below $500,000 compared to last year at this time and demand is down by 9% as well. As home values continue to rise, this range is slowly disappearing.
• Demand, the number of pending sales over the prior month, increased by 2% from 2,866 to 2,935 in the past two weeks. Demand was at 2,762 last year, 6% less than today. The average pending price is $790,569.
• The average list price for all of Orange County is $1.4 million.
• For homes priced below $750,000, the market is HOT with an expected market time of just 50 days. This range represents 45% of the active inventory and 67% of demand.
• For homes priced between $750,000 and $1 million, the expected market time is 84 days, a slight seller’s market (between 60 and 90 days). A slight seller’s market is one with very little appreciation, but sellers still get to call more of the shots during negotiation. This range represents 19% of the active inventory and 17% of demand.
• For luxury homes priced between $1 million to $1.5 million, the expected market time is at 114 days, decreasing by 6 days in the past couple of weeks. For homes priced between $1.5 million to $2 million, the expected market time dropped slightly from 162 days to 159 days. For luxury homes priced above $2 million, the expected market time dropped from 334 days to 304 days. The luxury end, all homes above $1 million, accounts for 36% of the inventory and only 16% of demand.
• The expected market time for all homes in Orange County decreased from 77 to 75 days in the past couple of weeks, a slight seller’s market.
• Distressed homes, both short sales and foreclosures combined, make up only 1.8% of all listings and 2.8% of demand. There are 45 foreclosures and 85 short sales available to purchase today, that’s 130 total distressed homes on the active market, dropping by 6 in the past two weeks.
• There were 2,820 closed sales in July, a 9% drop from June and 13% fewer than last year’s 3,243 closings. The sales to list price ratio was 97.5%. Foreclosures accounted for 1% of all closed sales and short sales accounted for 1.7%. That means that 97.3% of all sales were good ol’ fashioned equity sellers.

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