Orange County, CA Update
Orange County home sales for less than a residence’s total debt increased 33.8% in January from the year before, Southern California Multiple Listing Service figures show.
The listing service reported that 487 of January’s deals were “short sales” — or sales in which the purchase price is less than mortgage balance. That’s nearly 28% of all Orange County resales traded through the MLS.
At the same time, bank-owned foreclosed homes sold that month fell nearly two-thirds from the previous January to 293 transactions — a 62% drop.
In January 2008, nearly 800 bank-owned homes were sold, accounting for half of all homes sold through the MLS. This past January, they made up 16.8%.
The combined total for all types of “distressed sales” accounted 49.3% of all MLS deals this past January, compared to 77% a year earlier. The SoCal MLS reported that distressed sales totaled 862 in January, down 27.6% from the previous January’s total of nearly 1,200.
Here are the SoCal MLS figures for distressed sales for the past 13 months:
| Month | ShortSales | BankOwned | Other | Total |
|---|
| Jan | 364 | 772 | 55 | 1,191 |
| Feb | 294 | 658 | 24 | 976 |
| Mar | 346 | 772 | 43 | 1,161 |
| Apr | 392 | 701 | 33 | 1,126 |
| May | 401 | 684 | 43 | 1,128 |
| Jun | 468 | 595 | 33 | 1,096 |
| Jul | 448 | 595 | 35 | 1,078 |
| Aug | 459 | 495 | 39 | 993 |
| Sep | 477 | 412 | 23 | 912 |
| Oct | 530 | 443 | 37 | 1,010 |
| Nov. | 405 | 361 | 30 | 796 |
| Dec. | 547 | 372 | 37 | 956 |
| Jan | 487 | 293 | 82 | 862 |