Collapse: L.A. housing prices drop 16.7% in five months

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A month ago, I quoted a reader who called the December report on home sales in Southern California ‘the ugliest DQ report ever posted.’ Today’s DQ report, for January sales, is going to give December a run for its money in the ugly category. This report is unattractive. Not pretty. U-g-l-y.

Headlines: The level of home sales in L.A. County dropped 50% from year-ago levels. The median sales price of homes sold in the county dropped to $458,000 -- now down $12,000 in one month, and $92,000 from its August peak. That’s five months. Let me repeat that: Sales prices in L.A. have dropped 16.7% in five months. That is a collapse of prices. Read more about it on LATimes.com.

L.A. median sales prices have now fallen back to levels last seen in May of 2005 (Commenter Kathy asked for that). A better piece of information: Check out this interactive chart put together by my colleague Ben Welsh tracking median Southern California home prices over the last 20 years. Very cool.

You can blame the freeze in jumbo loans; you can argue that prices really aren’t falling that fast, that the median is distorting true market conditions. Maybe. But it is still a collapse of median sales prices, the market measure most widely publicized and most widely discussed in this region.

I’ll update this post later with more data and analysis.

Month L.A. median sales price y/y change 12-month L.A. sales total

Jan. 07 $520,000 6.0% 108,755
Feb 07 $528,000 8.0% 107,966
Mar 07 $540,000 6.0% 105,514
Apr 07 $540,000 6.0% 103,450
May 07 $550,000 7.0% 100,160
Jun 07 $545,000 5.0% 96,513
Jul 07 $547,500 5.0% 94,478
Aug 07 $550,000 6.0% 90,985
Sept 07 $525,000 1.2% 86,610
Oct 07 $500,000 -3.8% 82,527
Nov 07 $499,000 -3.5% 78,712
Dec 07 $470,000 -10.5% 74,663
Jan 08 $458,000 -11.9% 71,256

Thoughts? Comments? Insights? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com