The price of an existing Orange County home fell 2.1% in February from January, while the pace of sales continued to be squeezed by the credit and liquidity crunch, the California Association of Realtors said on Monday.
The median price for an existing stand-alone OC home sold in February was $596,520, a $12,510 drop from a month ago. Prices in the county now are down 13.9% from a year earlier.
OC’s home values fared better than the rest of the state, which saw a 26.2% decrease in the median sales price of an existing home in February, to $409,240.
The Realtor association excludes condominiums from its figures.
Including condos, the median price of an OC home was $520,000 in February, according to La Jolla-based market tracker DataQuick Information Systems, a unit of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates.
That’s down 16% from a year ago, and is a 19% decrease from OC’s record high, set in June, according to DataQuick.
Borrowers continue to have difficulty securing financing for jumbo loans of more than $417,000, making sales of homes above $500,000 hard to come by, according to the California Association of Realtors.
Sales in Orange County were down 25% in February from a year ago, although the pace showed improvement from January, with a 34% month-to-month increase.
Statewide sales were down 29% in February from a year ago, according to the Realtor association.
