Southern California home sales outpaced last year for the fifth consecutive month in November, when 55% of buyers in the resale market chose repossessed homes. The abundance of discounted foreclosures helped push the median sale price down a record 35% from a year ago.
A total of 16,720 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the six-county Southland last month. That was down 22.3% from 21,532 in October but up 26.9% from 13,173 in November 2007, compares with annual gains of 64.6% in September and 66.7% in October. Moreover, the 22.3% drop in sales between October and November was a record and compares with an average October-to-November decline of just 7.4% since 1988. Last month's Southland sales were the second-lowest for any November in 16 years.
The median price paid for all homes combined last month was $285,000, down 5% from October and down a record 34.5% from November 2007. Last month's median was the lowest since it was $298,000 in April 2003, which was the last time the median was below $300,000. November's median stood 43.6% below the peak $505,000 median reached in spring and summer of last year.
Foreclosures have accounted for about half of all Southland resales during the past three months. In November, 54.6% of all the homes that resold had been foreclosed on at some point in the prior 12 months. That's up from 50.9% in October and 18.8% a year ago. At the county level, these "foreclosure resales" ranged from 44.1% of November existing home sales in Los Angeles County to 70.4% in Riverside County.
The typical monthly mortgage payment that Southern California buyers committed themselves to paying was $1,323 last month, down from $1,413 the previous month, and down from $2,049 a year ago. Adjusted for inflation, current payments are 37.4 percent below typical payments in the spring of 1989, the peak of the prior real estate cycle. They are 48.7 percent below the current cycle's peak in June 2006.
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