O.C. housing market literally 'on fire' | housing, market, county - The Orange County Register

O.C. housing market literally 'on fire' | housing, market, county - The Orange County Register

By JONATHAN LANSNER

Orange County's housing market speed – by one measure – quickened 8.2% in the past two weeks and sped up 48.8% in a year. The latest Orange County home inventory report from Steve Thomas and ReportsOnHousing.com – data as of March 15 includes these thoughts …

Here’s the big secret: the housing market is literally on fire and homes are flying off the market. Further, the housing inventory is running on empty; the foreclosure and short sale distressed inventory is at a low not seen since they started flooding the market back in 2007; and, the last time demand was this hot in the month of March, it was the tail end of the housing bubble, 2005. Why is the housing market such a big secret? All of the major housing indices are based upon closed sales. The S&P/Case-Shiller Index, the Federal Housing Finance House Price Index, and Dataquick are sources for newspapers and the nightly news. They are all snapshots of sold activity of the prior month. Sold activity is also a reflection of pending sales thirty to sixty days back. Reports of February closed sales were homes, for the most part, placed into escrow in December and the first half of January, the slowest time of the year for housing. Those numbers are in no way a barometer of today’s market.

Thomas' signature housing measurement is his "market time" benchmark. It tracks how many months it theoretically takes to sell all the inventory in the local MLS for-sale listings at the current pace of pending deals being made. By this Thomas logic, as of March 15 – we see …

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Staff

• Market time of 1.86 months for Orange County buyers to gobble up all homes for sale at the current pace vs. 2.02 months two weeks ago vs. 3.63 months a year ago vs. 2.68 months two years ago.
• Of the 8 Orange County pricing slices Thomas tracks, 7 had faster market time vs. 2 weeks ago; and 6 improved over a year ago.
• Orange County homes listed for under a million bucks have a market time of 1.58 months vs. 6.08 months for homes listed for more than $1 million.
• So, basically, it is 3.9 times harder to sell a million-dollar-plus residence!
• And just so you know, the million-dollar market represents 21% of all homes listed and 6% of all homes that entered into escrow in the past 30 days.

Here's the recent data for listings; deals pending; market time in months; latest vs. 2 weeks earllier, a year ago and 2 years ago. Note: k=thousand; m=million ...

Slice	Listings	Deals	Market Time (months)	2 week ago	1 yr. ago	2 yr. ago
$0-$250k	1,170	779	1.50	1.64	3.41	1.94
$250k-$500k	2,279	1,757	1.30	1.42	2.89	1.82
$500k-$750k	1,391	743	1.87	2.17	3.74	2.74
$750k-$1m	701	233	3.01	3.13	4.21	3.89
$1m-$1.5m	498	146	3.41	3.66	6.63	6.55
$1.5m-$2m	308	44	7.00	6.41	6.30	7.42
$2m-4m	399	42	9.50	10.97	10.58	12.04
$4m+	247	7	35.29	61.25	20.00	27.75
All O.C.	6,943	3,738	1.86	2.02	3.63	2.68