Orange County Suffers SoCal's Steepest Homebuying Slowdown

The slowdown in Orange County homebuying for resale housing is the sharpest reversal in Southern California, according to one benchmark.

ReportsOnHousing calculates home-sales speed with it’s “estimated market time,” which compares new escrows opened to the number of homes listed for sale. As of June 16, Orange county’s market time was 69 days vs. 66 days four weeks ago and 60 days a year ago.

ReportsOnHousing considers any reading below 90 days to be a “seller’s market” – so the extended time required to sell is more a warning sign than a serious market challenge to date.

Still, the slowing pace – due to fresh supply rising faster than new demand – turned Orange County from an better-than-average regional performer to a laggard. The six-county average put SoCal market time at 65 days last week vs. 63 days both four weeks ago and a year ago.

In Orange County, market time has jumped because listing inventory rose by 601 homes (10 percent) in four weeks to to 6,868. New pending sales fell by 155 home to 2,989, a 5 percent drop.

“Basic Econ 101 tells us that when supply increases by 10 percent and demand drops by 5 percent, the pace at which homes sell cools. As a result, homes are not selling like hot cakes like they were a month ago,” wrote Steve Thomas of ReportsOnHousing.

The nine-day increase in Orange County market time since June 2015 is the largest one-year jump in home-seller length among SoCal counties:

• Ventura, up five days to 49 days last week.

• San Diego, up four days to 51 days.

• San Bernardino, up three days to 74 days.

• Los Angeles, up one day to 59 days.

• Only Riverside County showed improvement, with market time down five days to 91 days, worst in the region.

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