By Jeffery Marino
Despite higher interest rates and higher consumer prices, buyers continued to compete for homes in Northeast Los Angeles in July, the latest month with full housing data.
The median sale price for a home in NELA was $1.24 million in July, a 21% increase over July of last year. That’s a slightly lower median price than in June and a somewhat slower annual pace of price appreciation than NELA homeowners have become accustomed to, but it’s still indicative of a hot seller’s market.
And that’s not the only sign that the market in NELA remains hot.
The median days on market in July was 27, which is seven days faster than a year ago. The average sale-to-list ratio, which measures how much buyers paid for a home relative to the asking price, was 113%. That’s below the all-time high ratio in NELA of 116%, set in May. But it still represents a premium of about $160,000 for a typical home in NELA. A ratio that high indicates that sellers, not buyers, have the upper hand in price negotiations.
Home prices in NELA are being held aloft by low inventory and a dearth of new listings of homes for sale. Inventory in July was down 17% year-over-year and new listings were down 20% compared to a year ago.
Clearly, potential home sellers in NELA are in no hurry to put their homes on the market. At the same time, buyers are clamoring for homes in NELA. That supply-demand imbalance is a formula for higher prices and, so far, it’s proving stronger than any drag from inflation and higher rates.
Jeffery is a seasoned data journalist and has covered the California real estate market for over a decade.
