HOME SALES PERK UP & PRICES FALL...NOT AS MUCH AS YOU MIGHT THINK

Orange County home prices rose 9.5% in August (the latest full month available) and that's good news, no matter how the papers try to spoil it.  The papers posted that prices dipped to their lowest in 5 months, but that is a misleading quote.  Did prices go down? No.  Did the median price go down?  Yes.  There is a difference.  When you have nearly 400 more sales in one month, and the number of sales under $400,000 is nearly 4 to 1 to home sales over $700,000, your median price is going to fall.  It does not mean that prices dipped nearly 5% as recent headlines read.  In fact, even as prices fell in some areas by 1-3%, other prices rose depending on location, condition, and competition.  Homes that are in prime condition and properly staged to represent a home a buyer could picture themselves living in, are likely to garner over list price, especially if they are equity sales.  If the recent market has taught us nothing else, it is that buyers everywhere are tiring of the, "patience equity" achieved by hanging around for months during a short sale escrow.  They can last 3 months to a year.  Buyers are showing up in droves for properties that are in an equity position, prepared to pay a premium to be able to close in 30 to 45 days.  Sellers that are in that position, may well be in the driver's seat, especially if the only competition in their neighborhood is distressed properties.  The exact numbers will be featured in a later paragraph, but here are some big numbers for the state: there were 37,734 new and resale houses and condos sold statewide in August.  The number of sales typically does increase from July to August, but to give it some context, the lowest July is 29,764 in 1992 and a high arrived in 2005 of 73,285.  It is easy to see we're way above the low, but nowhere near  the high.  In fact the average is 48,344.  We do have a ways to go, but for some who remember the sting only California really felt in the early 90's, it's not your imagination, it was worse then,  than it is now.