L.A. Times: Worst August for home sales in 15 years - "Prices are falling everywhere"

No surprise here. Annette Haddad's September 13 story says that the Southland August sales tumble was "driven down by tougher lending standards, mounting foreclosures, and skittish buyers."

71% of the Southland's zip codes showed price declines. This excluded areas with fewer than 15 sales.

Here are home sales by county:

County         Median      % YOY      #sold      %YOY
               Price         Chg                  Chg
Los Angeles   $550,000      +5.8%     6,647      -34.4%
Orange        $642,300      +1.9%     2,285      -33.9%
Riverside     $394,500      -6.1%     2,834      -46.4%
San Bernadino $360,000      -1.6%     2,096      -47.2%
San Diego     $475,000      -4.0%     3,104      -19.4%
Ventura       $575,000      -4.2%       789      -31.2%

TOTAL                                17,755

Southland August sales totalled 17,755 units. Sales haven't been this low in August since 1992, with 16,400 units, so we've hit a 15-year low.

The median home price for all the Southland for August was up 2.7% YOY to $500,000, and in Los Angeles County, the median price rose 5.8% to $550,000, according to DataQuick. Again, analysts are saying that rising median prices are due to more sales in the high-end markets. Those markets don't rely heavily on toxic mortgage financing.

The region's homebuilders are getting the wind knocked out of them. So some builders, like Standard Pacific, are hosting "blowout" sales, similar to the sales car dealers have to unload excess inventory. Some are offering incentives, like mortgage loan rates of less than 6%, a new refrigerator, washer, dryer, window blinds, big flat-screen TVs, etc, if buyers go through with their purchase. But one buyer is not being swayed by any of that and flatly states, "My goal is to get the lowest price possible." And one analyst says that such incentives haven't been turning the sales slump around.

Right now, Orange County has a 14 month backlog of inventory, with more than half owned by people "who don't have to sell. They are clogging up our market right now." says the president of a Re/Max brokerage. "This is the time that if you really don't have to sell, don't. Even if you'd like to sell, don't. One appraiser thinks that parts of the Inland Empire have close to a 3 year inventory backlog.

DataQuick reports that in early August, 43.4% of all Southland home sales involved a jumbo loan. That figure was 39.7% in the latter half of the month.

Be sure to check the original story for more graphics and interactive features.

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Flash back to 1990. Realtors were speaking then of a "wonderful buyers market", but if you don't need to sell your home, "pull off."

If homebuilders go through with their blowout sales, we may get a spike in sales volume. If the areas I cover in my month-end dollar volume charts will include such blowout sales, I might see dollar volume come back over 0% again in some areas. We'll see.