By Jeffery Marino
At $1.1 million, the median price of a house in Northeast Los Angeles was unchanged from December 2021 to January 2022.
But the pause in price increases looks temporary for the simple reason that there are still more buyers in NELA than houses for sale.
The dearth of homes on the market is due to steep declines in both overall inventory and new listings of homes for sale.
In January, inventory in NELA fell by 48% and new listings were down 24%. That’s the steepest inventory decline in records going back to 2013 and the largest drop in new listings since June 2020, when potential home sellers were waiting for the pandemic to subside before putting their houses on the market.
The lack of homes for sale translated into just 317 sales in NELA in January, including single-family, condo and multifamily dwellings. That total represents a 6% decline in sales from a year earlier.
Fewer houses for sale also translated into another month of frenzied buying in January, when houses in NELA typically sold in only 38 days — five days faster than a year ago. Moreover, successful buyers paid about $100,000 more than the asking price on average.
In effect, buyers in January snatched up all the homes listed for sale that month and a chunk of those that had been on the market for more than month.
Price increases took a breather in January. But supply/demand dynamics being what they are, price tags of one million dollars or more for NELA homes are likely to remain the rule, not the exception.
