by Calculated Risk on 1/16/2006 05:03:00 PM

The Union-Tribune reports: House resales take a tumble in December

San Diego County resale house prices tumbled last month by the biggest number in 18 years of record-keeping and contributed to the smallest year-to-year rise in overall prices in six years, DataQuick Information Systems reported Monday.

The median resale price for existing single-family homes dropped $15,000 from November to December to stand at $550,000, the largest month-to-month decline since DataQuick began keeping records in 1988.

However, last month's figure was still ahead of what it was in December 2004 by $25,000, or 4.8 percent.
...
Last year was the first time since 2001 that the number of home sales fell from the previous year. The total sold last year was 55,366, down 9.1 percent from 2004's 60,886.
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On Thursday, the San Diego Association of Realtors, which monitors about 60 percent of the housing market, reported that properties took longer to sell in 2005 than in 2004 – lingering on the market for, on average, 62 days last year compared to 54 in 2004.

And the total number of listings has been growing, reaching a peak of just over 15,000 listings in November, about five times more than at the peak of the buying frenzy in spring 2004.

Rising inventories, fewer transactions and now lower prices.

DataQuick will report on the rest of California over the next few days - it will be interesting to see if other areas are reporting falling prices - San Diego (along with Boston) has been leading the way into this slowdown. Also inventories probably declined in December as many sellers removed their properties from the market for the holidays. I expect inventories to start rising again in the January report.