OC Home Price Drops Still Slowly Moderating

Let’s check in on the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). Here’s a summary of the latest data for the Los Angeles area, which includes LA and Orange Counties:

April 2009
Month to Month: Down 0.9%
Year to Year: Down 21.3%
Change from Peak: Down 41.8% in 31 months

Since Case-Shiller lumps LA and Orange Counties together, I won’t repeat everything I wrote on the LA Sweet Digs blog. For more analysis and some graphs of the LA Case-Shiller data, check out my post over there: Case-Shiller: LA Home Price Drops Still Slowly Moderating.

June City/Neighborhood Price Reductions

Let’s take our monthly look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.

The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.

For those that are interested, I have uploaded the full data set in Excel format here. The downloadable Excel file also includes charts showing the top ten cities/towns/neighborhoods with the least reduced-price listings.

First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:

Of the 42 cities/towns we ranked in Orange County this month, 15 had price-reduced ratios of fifty percent or more.

Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Orange County neighborhoods for price reductions:

Of the 51 neighborhoods we ranked in Orange County this month, 9 had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. On average, the neighborhoods with more price reductions had median closed prices roughly double the medians in neighborhoods those with fewer price reductions.

The general trend in Orange County looks to be heading slightly toward less price reductions, however every city and neighborhood is of course different. Some may be getting softer while others get tighter. Download the full spreadsheet to check where your neighborhood came in.

Biggest Discounts June Update

Let’s check in on our stats once again and find out where buyers are currently getting the biggest discounts off asking price. If you are a potential buyer, this will help you to know which neighborhoods may be softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.

In the chart below, we have taken all sales data from last month in Orange County and sorted it by city/town. We calculated the overall difference between the sale price and the list price. Note that this reflects the final list price, after all price drops in the listing. Any areas with fewer than ten sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings, but interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).

Here are the top ten areas with the largest overall discount:

The overall discount dropped just a bit in June from our previous update in April, falling to 3.6% from 3.8%.

Here are the ten areas with the smallest discounts:

Here’s an added bonus. The following chart shows the top ten areas with the largest overall discount from the original list price, instead of the final list price:

Apparently sellers in Laguna Beach tend to be the most overly-optimistic with their original list prices. 13 of the 36 ranked cities/towns in Orange County came in with discounts from original list over 10%.

Is the area you’re shopping not on either the top 10 or bottom 10? No problem, just download the full rankings in Excel format and hit the “FullSummary” sheet.

Of the 2,347 sales we tracked in the 1-month period, 200 homes (9%) sold for 10% or more off the asking price, while 268 homes sold for 5% or more above the asking price.