One of my favorite economics reporters is Jon Lansner from the Orange County Register. His articles get picked up by the Union-Tribune too and he has a good piece this morning on slow home sales. Nationally, he reported, "recent sales are 21% below pre-pandemic 2019, or what some folks see as the good ol’ days. And they’re 7% below average transaction volumes since 1975." He went on to say, "recent sales equal 36 per 1,000 American households. That is the slowest rate since 1983. Yes, that’s 41 years ago, when we saw crazy days with 13.2% mortgages and 5.2% joblessness." Not great news.
Between price, interest rates and wages, home ownership is too expensive for many people. So what needs to happen to get the real estate market going? Lansner said, "To get the current market back only to historically average affordability – 28% of income – mortgage rates must fall to 5.3%, household incomes must jump by 15%, or home prices need to drop 14%. Or some combination of this trio." Ugh. If you are interested in more stats read the entire article . Locally we are not struggling to the same extent. January showed detached closed home sales up 5.1 percent over 2024 but attached homes closed sales were down 4.3% over January 2024 according to SDAR. The graph below also provides a good visual on historical sales trends. You can see we are at historically low levels going back to 2012 but holding relatively steady with January in both 2023 and 2024.
