Orange County home prices started the year off slowly, with the median price of a home sold here falling 4.8% to $600,000 in January, versus a month ago.
Prices last month were unchanged compared to a year ago, and now stand 6.6% below the county’s record high, set in June, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems, a unit of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates.
Dataquick revised its method for computing monthly totals in its latest figures. As a result, the county’s highest median price now is listed at $642,500, a $3,500 decline from what was previously reported last June.
The revised method has tweaked monthly prices by about 1%, on average, DataQuick said.
Sales in the county remained sluggish in January, dropping 16.3% from a year ago. There were 2,400 new homes sold last month. It was the 15th straight month that home sales came in below year-ago levels.
The Southland saw 18,128 homes sold last month, a 17.2% drop from the year before, and a 25.1% drop from December. The median price of a Southern California home was $485,000 in January, a 5% increase from a year ago.
Orange County remains the Southland’s most expensive place to buy a home.
Ventura County, the second most expensive county, saw a 6.5% decline in year-over-year median prices in January, and now stands at $565,000.
San Diego was also down, dropping 5.6% to 472,000. Los Angeles had the strongest showing last month, with median prices up 6.1% to $520,000.
