California’s Housing Market Forecast
This report on the California housing market updated for October, covers important stats including home prices,sales, and recent home sales trends from CAR, NAR, Statista, Zillow and more. And we’ll take a look at the forecast for 2020.
The California real estate market
was active in October. This is the 4th straight month of sales above 400,000. House sales in Los Angeles and the inland empire grew strongly,up 11.8% and 10.5% respectively. San Francisco saw house sales jump 14.6% with prices up 6.8% over September.
Sales of condos across
California rose 5.2% in September while their average price fell slightly by .1%. Monthly mortgages fell so many buyers may have felt it was a time to jump into the market. CAR doesn’t report on who is causing this latest surge.
Big Jump in Home Sales
San Francisco County saw the biggest change in sales. Sales were 101% over September’s totals. Prices in SF rose 7.1% MoM and are up 31.% YoY.
In Marin county, sales rose 30% while prices rose 2.8% and in San Mateo, sales jumped by 26.8% with prices up 6.1% over September. Santa Clara (+12.6%) and Alameda county (+21.8%) also enjoyed big increases.
Los Angeles County had big sales growth above 21%, Monterey up 19%, and Ventura up 19%.
San Diego County home sales grew 1.7% (up 11.2% YoY) while prices rose 2.4%.
A Paradox of Good and Bad
Given the low interest rates and corporate withdrawal of capital expenditures, it’s not surprising to see low job growth in tech,manufacturing and banking & finance. Construction and administrative job growth was strong. Unemployment has fallen now to a record low 4.0%.
Yet homelessness and extreme housing costs are making life tougher for most Californians, particularly rental tenants. Housing construction restrictions and other regulations are weighing very heavily on the quality of life in the Golden State and raising rent prices.
In what some expert economists forecast to be bearish times out west, it seems it’s going okay though. If some projections of a growing US economy from 2020 onward come true, home prices may roar back in 2020.
