By Jeffery Marino
The latest data for home sales in Northeast Los Angeles show a hot, tight market that just keeps getting hotter and tighter.
The median sale price for a home in NELA in February was $1.125 million, a 22% increase over February last year. That’s the largest annual price increase since June 2014 and the 13th consecutive month of double-digit annual price jumps.
At the same time, the inventory of homes for sale was down nearly 50% in February from a year ago and new listings continued to drop, down 25% year-over-year. By the end of February, there were only 119 homes for sale on the market in NELA.
The hot, tight conditions have buyers in a frenzy.
Half of all homes that sold in NELA in February were on the market for no more than 36 days compared to 44 days a year ago. On average, buyers paid 9.3% above the asking price to snag a home in NELA in February compared to 4% a year ago.
What could cool the market in NELA?
Data for the month of March, which comes out in mid-April, will start to show the effect on home-price appreciation, if any, of the Federal Reserve’s quarter-point interest rate hike on March 16. Similarly, economic fallout from the war in Ukraine would begin to show up in the March figures.
One thing is already known: The home-sale market in NELA has been resilient and raging for a long time because demand for homes far outpaces supply. As long as that remains the case, prices will keep going up, come what may. The only questions are how high and how fast.
